thanks for the
Permaculture magazine article - I love that mag, by the way, and decided to order it after listening to Paul interviewing Maddy.
And after reading Sepps book, i got intrigued with Hugel kultur and have 3 kind of going. The first one ended up a hybrid of straw bale and hugel, the second one is Hugel all the way and doing great - even though it took me forever to finish. Sepp is not kidding that it takes a lot longer when you do it all by hand. Even the piling of logs and branches. I pile it all up, water it down nicely, had to go off do other things (like work), come back and the darn thing shrank a bunch. So, I pile on more branches, water them down and...... repeat....and again. i did that several times before I decided to heck with it, its time to pile on
compost and soil - no sod for me. Only Bermuda grass - my enemy. Dug down and around the bed very carefully removing every bit of it....
With the 3rd one, I got smarter. I founded an organic edibles garden club and scheduled a workday

That way, I only had to supervise and we got it piled pretty high....