Cool pics and info about my tiny keyhole worm farm hugelbeet

    I built this hugelbeet in the fall of 2020. I wanted to list a bunch of cool stuff about it. Last year, as expected, it kinda never got off the ground, although I did incorporate some kitchen scraps and what not into it, to provide the needed nitrogen boost.

    In back of the garden bed itself, I dug an in-ground worm farm. Basically, I put some cow manure and quite a lot of kitchen scraps in a pit, and threw in some red worms that had been eating the cow manure, hoping they were compost worms. Turns out, they were. They stuck around until now, and continue to eat stuff I throw into that pit.

    I presume that earthworms have been dipping into the compost worm castings and spreading those nutrients further in their own castings, because I haven’t had to harvest castings once.

    Last year, I transplanted dead nettle into the garden bed, without being sure what they were, but knowing that they were edible, because they have square stems and opposite leaves. Now, along with Bishop’s weed, another wonderful wild edible, it is the primary soil stabilizer for this garden bed.

    I planted some lupine seeds last year, and they are really getting going this year. Some clover is gaining a foothold, as well. I’m using these perennials as a framework within which I can basically do a kind of square foot (more like square decimeter) gardening.

    This year the onion starts (for greens) are really taking off. Really, everything that I planted is doing great so far. Brassicas, lettuce, beets etc. Most things, I plant and then forget about, so when they come up, it’s a pleasant surprise. Last fall, I let a huge lambsquarter plant go to seed and did some seed spreading myself, so I have lambsquarter coming up everywhere. I actually removed some of it, to replace it with kale and other greens. Sunflowers are sprouting all over the backslopes, towards the apple tree under whose dripline the hugelbeet is situated, and the comfrey I planted is just exploding.

    We found a vacated mouse hole in the side of the hugelbeet. I know it is vacated, because it was pointed out to me by my brother, who saw a bumblebee flying into it. So now there’s a bumblebee colony in my garden, thanks to not tilling, attracting rodents, and keeping active mouse-killers (cats)! How awesome is that?

    Burdock is another welcome weed I have. It’s pretty much analogous to carrots, as a biennial root crop.

    I took too many pictures, here are some more of them. One of them is a pic of my primary fertilizer regime of a brew of weeds from the bed, along with the only tool I use to interact with the bed: a small, home-forged rice knife. (My brother made the knife. I put the handle on it)

    To use the fertilizer, I pour half the liquid in the jar into the near-full watering can, then refill the jar from the watering can. Then I empty the watering can onto the hugelbeet. Occasionally, I add some more weeds to it. The idea is that I’m breeding anaerobes that eat all those nutrients in the weeds, and then I’m introducing the anaerobes into an aerobic environment, where they die, and the aerobes  scarf up those easily available nutrients.

    I use the mini rice knife as a kind of hoe, to disturb an area and make a seed bed, or to chop and drop groundcover, or to harvest stuff, if I need to do it especially delicately.