New hugelkultur bed

Just wanted to show off a few pics of our new mini hugelkultur bed. We dug a level trench so the entire thing would hydrate well, then filled with wood and aged wood chips. We put the sod back on upside down and then covered the whole thing with a load of mushroom compost.

There are a lot more pics on my blog if you want to see more. http://www.wholeviewfarm.blogspot.com/2013/05/expanding-zone-1-new-hugelkulture-bed.html










I can't wait to plant it! I know it wont really get rolling for a year or two, but I'm still excited.

lovely, quite similar to the one I built only mine is much smaller. These photos were last November, since I have planted a few things on it..more photos later maybe, snowing now here.

good photos , neat work , I wonder how much time you spend on it , and how much money ? keep the good faith

I don't know about Josef, but mine was totally free..I just used some logs that were gettin punky and some large chunks of wood that wouldn't split easily as well as some branches and bark and chips in mine....have owned the tractor for a long time, son ran the tractor, and the soil came from the hole..so free

Beautiful bed with nice placement. What do you think you'll end up planting there for this growing season?

Brenda... Awesome mound! Looking forward to some pics of it planted.

Mustafa, Lot's of time and energy (we don't have a tractor) but not very much money. Digging was the hardest part, but hauling wood is not too fun either. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 40hrs into the build. The wood, woodchips, and soil were all free. We did spend $30 on a pickup load of finished mushroom compost and used less than 1/2 of it to top dress the mound.

Joe, thank you, it is now planted with a polyculture including tomatoes, peppers, basil, parsley, cilantro, goji berries, strawberries, borage, comfrey, lettuce, carrot, liatris, petunia, amish cockscomb, and celosia. Next year I plan to put our chicago hardy fig on the corner.

yeah mine too is planted to annuals this year except a baby peach tree whip on each end..so far so good

Just wanted to post an update on the project. So far so good.

I did a longer post with more pics on my blog, http://wholeviewfarm.blogspot.com/2013/06/hugelkulture-update.html

But here are a couple from this morning so you can see the progress.

your bed is absolutely beautiful..Mine is doing OK but had a gob of wild clover and alfalfa seed in the topsoil we used and I'm trying to pull and drop a bunch of it for mulch right now..but can't seem to get ahead of it.

My lettuces and cabbages are doing great, the peach trees are growing well, the tomatoes aren't doing as well as I'd like or the peppers, the squashes are tiny, the broccoli and spinach has bolted to seed, the cosmos flowers are fine..

the top and east side are drying out quickly so last night i put a soaker hose on the top..I think mine is a lot taller and steeper than yours but I really love yours..wish I had gone in that direction but I still can do that in another area in the future..(don't have the stones to use though)

Thank you Brenda, the compliment means a lot coming from someone who knows their stuff.

I am extremely happy with how this bed is going. We have already harvested a bunch of basil, parsley, and cilantro. The petunias are exploding now which is really exciting to me because they are from seed I saved last year and really didn't know what to expect. It is interesting that the seed all came from one purple plant and yet we got this incredible variety of colors. The tomatoes are just starting to form up, the plants are about four feet tall now. It is an astounding difference from the ones in our square foot beds which are not much bigger than when we planted them, same variety (Amish paste) started together in the same tray. Granted I don't tend to the square foot beds like you are supposed to, but then I haven't really tended the hugel bed either, it just doesn't seem to need it. I feel that the care we put into digging down and leveling the base is really paying off. We do water this bed, but have done so less than a dozen times so far.

Here are some updated pics.

massive effort there hope it all pays off?

we only have our arms and hands of what reduced use they are.

our latest beds take the bend and stoop out of gardening:

we had pile of trees cleared and used branches and bark in the base of the beds.
len

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/straw_bale_garden.htm

the beds you did are an inspiration,it makes me want to build hugel beds along my East property line..between our son's house and ours..it would be a huge lot of work but it would be nice..I'd put trees in it too if I did, like my little bed. The trees are growing well but only were sticks this year so they have many years yet to grow, but it sure would be fun to have as long a bed as you have..maybe with some breaks in it to drive and walk thru

the finished product now had a season of cabbages and broccoli through it with some maybe won't grow properly here brussels sprouts still going. been topped up and remulched eady for the next season.

len