I am totally winging it. This is a rental in the suburbs in zone 8, but the woman we're renting from is my friend and she said to do with it as I will. First year, two 8x8 landscape timber beds were demolished and more manageable raised beds put in. The whole property and all the trees were overgrown with English and poison ivy, Japanese honeysuckle, and privet. I'm just clearing as I am able to (I'm 66, under 5', with only my body and hand tools to work with), then feeling my way along. As trees come down, I'm just working with what I've got to deal with and plugging in various perennials and seeds to see what happens.
I used a layer of plastic in the pond beneath the mound only because I want to retain the water rather than watching it soak through the ground and into the pond. The way that the system will gravity feed from one mound to another is that the ponds overflow when they are full. If I did not use the plastic barrier, I am afraid that the lower level mounds would never get any of the gray water. This may not be necessary since I have a lot of clay in the soil, but I had to design it somehow, and so that is the decision that I made. Thanks for asking.
The system that waters the series of Hugel / Keyhole gardens is quite extensive, featuring a cistern, supplemented by additional rainwater tanks for a total of 2300 gallons of rainwater storage. The gray water is not stored at all, but continually drains into the flooded pond under the mound. A system of pumps and valves give me an automatic control system that I can monitor and override through a Web UI.
BEAUTIFUL! I'd love to do the same, but am trying to avoid plastic everywhere I can. So I'm very curious why you needed to use plastic in those beds. What need did it address, and any suggestions on how else I can address it for a satisfactory end result? In any case, THANKS so much!
Here is a photo of the 1st Hugel / Keyhole garden from a distance.
You can see the hill dropping down to the pond, where I have already layed out the first course of landscaping blocks for 5 more identical Hugel / Keyhole mounds. The gray water will gravity feed from one mound to another, keeping them all flooded. The rainwater will daisy chain from one mound to another, and the overhead sprinkling will be individually controlled by schedule.
I am also posting a recent update of a Google Maps satellite photo of my property. You can see the 6 Hugel / Keyhole gardens clearly in the photo, although the 1st (and only functional) keyhole is obscured by the shadow of a tree. Nevertheless, it is there.
I will be planting in the new keyhole gardens this year, but that is essentially the same as planting in the ground with a mulch pile. The actual Hugel mounds will be built one at a time over the next couple years.
My garden, which is located about 40 miles south of St. Louis, MO features a Hugelkutur planting bed in the form of a keyhole garden. The underlying pond is continuously flooded from underneath by gray water, and irrigated from above with rain water.
Here is a series of pictures showing the first of 6 such Hugel mounds under construction.
I have just planted for the 2nd year. The first year my crop was crazy! The mound was overwhelmed. This year I am taking a much more conservative approach, and hope to have pictures of growies soon.
Here's a backyard shot from 4/1/19, the sunflowers in the back are third generation bird seed- I had a bunch of volunteers last spring and gathered some seed heads to replant in the fall, which also came up (much smaller due to lack of water) and produced seed heads, and now these have grown over the "winter" which has been one of the wettest winters in the last 10 years. The dutch white clover was tossed around as seed a year or two ago, and is nice and thick/tall.
Kota Dubois wrote:My land has very shallow soil (for the most part) so I make pockets with whatever is available. Since learning the advantages of burying wood in them all my new ones (I have many) have started that way, and any of the old ones which need redoing will get wood too. It's impossible to get a decent picture of everything but this gives an idea.
Luke Perkins
3/21/2019 1:56:20 AM
Subject: Garden picture exchange!
25 foot avocado in the snow. Bet not many of you have seen both of those in the same photo. Taken at Rolling River Farm- home of Fruitwood Nursery, one of the best sources for affordable scion wood and propagation material.
As of Spring 2019 we are currently looking for a couple people for long term caretaking/work trade positions. Located in Northern California along the Klamath River. See our posting here..
Winter storm shows up to say, you should start landscaping here;
ahh, not such a mess anymore. Also hugeling on hill in background;
finally get around to imposing increasingly lush and tasty order. Seed tossed salad bar;
the poor hillside that was first covered in english ivy and then sprayed with Roundup after the ivy was removed. It was such sun-baked subsoil brick clay that even the grass didn't take for on it for few years.
ahh, much better. Hard to tell, but its almost the same frame as previous photo. The grey pot in bottom right and the azalea on its left didn't move.
cluster lilly + itty bitty mystery sprouts in deep moss
fawn lilly + fava beans
newts show up to hump in my shallow ~5x7 pond-lined water lens paddy. OMG so honored
garden spidies on purple brocollini
stairway to blackberries
blackberries started wild and some of the rhizomes have a 20 year head start on the other 20 or so fruits I planted in recent years. Looking oh so fugly with all the dead growth in the dead of winter;
These are some of this year's last pumpkin haul (gathered in just before the frost) curing on the terrace. We've made gallons of soup today but we'll keep the best ones in storage for winter.
Siamese squash (Fig-leaf gourd, Malabar gourd, black seed squash or Cidra) in the wheelbarrow in the photo on the left, can be stored for up to two years. The Queensland Blue on the right can be kept for about five months. The big pear shaped calabashes on the chairs can be cleaned out and used for lampshades, containers etc. We got about a dozen of these this year.
Here's one growing on a pergola.
We've eaten strawberries almost every day since July right up until a few days ago from the kitchen garden - but the frost has put an end to that.
We've also been doing a lot of reorganising and structural work. We've relined the pond at the back of the house with concrete (I've had enough of liners and the soil is very sandy here) and built a retaining wall. The pond is filled from the front roof of the house and a new grey water system we're doing. It will look nice when it's finished !
S Johnson
11/14/2018 1:44:25 AM
Subject: Garden picture exchange!
5/19/2019 1:28:22 AM
Subject: Garden picture exchange!
, all grown up: 
