Inoculating Hugel Beds

Hi all,

I thought I'd start a thread to talk about good places that provide large quantities of heritage seed of many types that we can use to plant into our hugel beds.

I've been looking online and it costs about $3 for 25 to 50 seeds. To plant a fresh Hugel bed (say, 8 ft high by 50 ft long) is going to take 1000's of seeds (and $1,000's) buying in small packets like this.

Maybe we can start a Hugel seeding program...

Here's a source of open pollinated vegetable seeds in bulk, other bulk seeds are also available: http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/BulkVeg.htm

Great idea! The Hudson site is sweet!!

bulk seed aka 1lbs or more should cost $6-$20 per lbs. so with $1000 you would get at least 50lbs of seed aka 50 different types of seed maybe 100lbs/100 different types of seed at the $10/lbs range. There is really only 10 veggie families (tomatoes, carrot, squash, onion, sunflower, beet, cabbage, mint, beans, rye/grass.) So that should be about $100 if you get 1 from each family. maybe $200 if you go with the $20/lbs price. If I where to assume that you are making a really good mix with 50 different plant i.e. 12 plants from each category(N-fixer, aerating root/mineral accumulator, mulch/drymass, and pest control/herbs. I dont see why 50 of those $2 packets would not do the job, you are only planting a 20ft by 50ft area.

I could be wrong, but it seems like all of JL Hudson's organic seed comes from Wild Garden Seeds. I would just buy from the source and save money. http://wildgardenseed.com

For example: at JL Hudson a 1/4 oz of Tulsi Basil is $8.00. At Wild Garden Seed: Tulsi Basil (same seed) is $16.00/oz, or 1/2 the price ($4 per 1/4 oz). While I love the heck out of JL Hudson and plan on sending them a bunch of my seed money, I would support Frank Morton and the growers of the seed and pay less in the process.

You'll notice this with a lot of seed businesses reselling Frank's (Wild Garden Seeds) stuff: Johnny's, Territorial, Uprising, Nichol's Garden...They all resell WGS stuff with added $$$ on top of the standard WGS price. They even will mention in the description "developed" by WGS/Frank Morton.

Another option is Seed Savers Exchange, which seems to have lower prices than most seed companies. One example: Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans. At Seed Savers it's $2.75 for 50 beans/$11 for a pound. At Adaptive Seeds it's $3.50 for 40 beans/$7.50 for 1/4 oz ($30 per pound!).

You also need to WATCH THE SHIPPING!!!

Seed Savers charged us more for shipping than the seed last year!

R Scott, Yikes. You're right. For one pound of beans is 11.00 + 8.82 (ups ground) shipping to Olympia. (Luckily Seed Savers has a seed rack at my local co-op so I can avoid shipping costs.)

I bought 25lbs of Fava beans from the folks over at groworganic.com (they also have soil builder and various cover crop mixes by the pound):

http://www.groworganic.com/fava-bean-windsor-raw-lb.html

They were around $2 per pound and they have $4.99 flat rate shipping. I also purchase innoculant and the grand total was less than $50. Not too shabby. Now to figure out what to do with all these Fava beans. 25lbs is a LOT of beans.

Dennis Lanigan wrote:R Scott, Yikes. You're right. For one pound of beans is 11.00 + 8.82 (ups ground) shipping to Olympia. (Luckily Seed Savers has a seed rack at my local co-op so I can avoid shipping costs.)

If you think that is bad, never order potatoes from them....

The amount wasn't the thing that really irked me--it was that they didn't tell us the shipping total and charged it blind.

Nick did you not mention elsewhere that it was a church project ? It might surprise you how much seed the participants might actually have from their own seed saving to begin with . Here's a thought to contact the Seed Sanctuary of Canada, http://www.seedsanctuary.com/ for a membership you can grow out selected seeds , growing them out, taking notes , keeping some for your self and donating some fresh back to the seed bank . Your group might be able to negotiate something growing varieties they really need continued and grown out this year ? The endeavour also may help retain genetic biodiversity for generations to come.
8 feet high is pretty ambitious . Mine is 50 feet long, 6 feet wide and about 3 feet high to date of layered trimmed branches to date , nothing covering it as the wood and brambles die off. Ludi, it looks like a beaver dam across my front yard between the house and the street, you can imagine what my upscale neighbours are thinking at this point .

I was in at the nearby Canadian headquarters of A Rocha today and it struck me that your group might be interested in their organization that focuses on stewardship of our earth by way of organic food cooperative gardens and environmental works from a Christian perspective. Their group encourage the organization of Seedy Sundays in various churches and might have ideas to help out projects like your own with seed sharing .

http://www.arocha.ca/

I met up with one of their members when they brought a wayward duck of mine home, and when I investigated their ideals I found it resonates highly with how I live, worth taking a look : http://www.arocha.ca/living-lighter/