Creating My First Raised Beds (Hugelkultur)

The building of the raised beds (hugelkultur) counts as project labor for the gardening and renovating projects in Longview, WA. Once I start planting with stuff to eat, then, it becomes nest labor.

While I was clearing the trail that I was maintaining today by the plum trees, I bundled up (using teasel like rope) the debris I had created and walked it up to the pond to start building raised beds. This is how my first raised bed is going. Eventually, I will be tossing the accumulated soil deposits the pond ontop of this. These are pictures of the slowly growing raised bed, as I put more and more bramble and brush down.

I added a lot more woody material that was on the trails that I made by the plum trees onto my slowly growing raised beds.

While clearing out some more of the brush on the trails by the plum trees, I found some more sticks and branches to add to my hugelkultur raised beds. I felt the trails were sufficiently cleared that I'll be able to harvest almost as many plums from the trees as they produce, so, I started digging soil out of the pond that I am renovating and began adding that soil to the hugelkultur raised bed!

This is the front and back sides of my hugelkultur raised bed after I added some soil to it from the pond. Adding soil to the backside of the bed was a bit more tedious than the front side, because I needed to get out of the pond each time, but it's getting there! Slowly but surely! The pond is slowly making its way to being restored, and the hugelkultur raised is slowly becoming itself!



I did the pond and hugelkultur work this morning, and then, I spent the rest of today painting the inside of a house. The painting was fun, and quite messy!

My hugelkultur raised bed is getting more fully covered! I spent most of today moving soil from the pond that I am renovating onto it.

These are pictures after all the work I did this morning!



These are pictures after the work I did this afternoon!

This is my progress on my first hugelkultur raised bed.



This is my progress on my second hugelkultur raised be. This one is smaller, because I had less material to work with on it.

This is what my second hugelkultur raised bed looked like at the end of today.

This was after adding some more soil from the pond onto my first hugelkultur raised bed.

Planting these in my hugelkultur raised bed was nest labor, so I did that at the very end of the day.

This was some lettuce



This was some melon, I think



This was some squash



And then, I did the above a few more times with other varieties of lettuce, melon, and squash, since those were the seeds I had left after all I planted in my garden.

I added some mulch to my first hugelkultur raised bed. I gathered the mulch by chopping down grass that was growing back in a couple spots I had been through with a weedwhacker or mower.

This is adding mulch to the front side



This is adding mulch to the back side

 

Trying to give a broader perspective on the hugelkultur raised bed

I peaked at my hugelkultur bed and it's starting to show some growies!

Looks like a watermelon!

I think I may have spotted some lettuce(?) seedlings sprouting. I checked them this morning before doing hay for the day.