Concrete-Junglekultur

Hey all,

I posted a few weeks ago as to whether you all thought hugelkultur would work ok over concrete. The consensus seemed to be that it would, so I built a 3 foot deep hugelbed over the concrete slab behind my little piece of Baltimore City.

I also built a much shallower bed where I'm testing out some of the sub-irrigation techniques suggested for lightweight rooftop growing (and you can see the set of sub-irrigated buckets that I used while I was a renter, in the background). The primary purpose of the shallow bed, though, is to test out various cover crops and have some space for my dog to lounge/roll around on. She was being pretty cute sunbathing on the concrete all the time, but it just seemed wrong for her to have no dirt.

I've attached a couple of pictures of the bed. I used all of the cut wood and brush that my neighbor gave me (more than is pictured went in before I filled. mostly long thin branches, up to 2 inches in diameter, and a hodgepodge of wood types) and covered with a mix of composted leaf mold and restaurant food scraps mixed with some screened topsoil. There's a really good composting operation nearby that delivered this for me. I'm setting up a worm bin as we speak, and plan to keep adding leaves as top mulch, in the fall.

I'll try to keep updating on how it works.

Wow! Your beds and soil look great! Sounds like you have your head on straight, too. I am interested to see if I can get the worms to eat the garbage too. The only suggestion from me is maybe consider insulating the worm bin when colder temperatures arrive. Otherwise, "I really like what you've done with the place..."