tl;dr I'm not sure what to sow in my hugelbed during the winter months, if anything.
Permie noob here. I found this place via YouTube, through researching chickens and farming. My chickens have been slowly revitalizing the earth in my backyard. The soil was garbage when I moved in a little over 2yrs ago. I don't know what the last tenants did. I still find old batteries in the yard from time to time. Anyway, this year things started growing, and I let just them. Partly because I'm lazy, and partly because I was curious as to what would happen. We've got lichen and moss and tall grasses and weeds and saplings. Even a couple of volunteer tomato vines. I really only trimmed the area a few times with the weed whacker, just to discourage snakes from making a home near my birds. Sort of chop and drop. I let the milkweed alone, because it drew in a bunch of cool insects like the monarch butterfly and tiny garden wasps. It grew to at least 4ft tall.
You guys inspired me with all this permaculture stuff, and so now I'm trying my hand at hugelculture. I don't think the landlord will care one way or the other, as long as the rent's on time. I already had a bunch of wood in my backyard from fallen/felled trees. More than I could have used for firewood. Also, the stars aligned, and I had a 3 day break in the cold weather that happened to coincide with my days off work! Providence!
So I piled the wood East to West, along the contour of my yard. As I was moving the wood, I found a ton of fungus under there, and even some tiny microclimates where green grass was still growing! The chickens loved that. Raked some halfway decomposed autumn leaves into a few piles. Cut down any brush on the property that was still standing and piled it. Spread out a bale of hay on top of the wood and added the leaves. Then, dug a mini-swale about 7in deep (since ground is frozen today) along the North side of the hugelbed, to catch the rainwater runoff from South side of the house (where we're missing a gutter), and piled the dirt on top. Topped it off with the brush, and filled the mini-swale with pine shavings that I had around for chicken bedding. The finished product is about 15' x 5' x 2-1/4' tall.
I tried to follow along with Paul's article and video as closely as possible. But the very last step is to sow seeds immediately. It's actually snowing today. I'm not sure what to plant, if anything.
I'm attaching some pictures I took during the process. Enjoy!
