Tuckers (Janklabs) GAMCOD

Hey I’m Tucker and this is my GAMCOD submission. I’m an off grid homesteader and content creator who lives in a tiny house. Because I’m a content creator I plan on making videos on my channel about the process of making my GAMCOD gardens, you can find me on YT, Instagram and TikTok with the username Janklabs. I’ll be recording everything on my S22+ smartphone.  I am making a 7 by 26ft hugelkulture for GAMCOD. The hugel is going to be in an open grassy field with full sun and heavy clay soil. The soil here has been used and abused for 100 years before I got here so it has next to no organic matter in it. The field produces a meager amount of weedy hay every year which a local farmer comes and collects for his dairy cows.

The last few days I’ve been busy chopping up fallen trees in the woods next to my house for my hugelkulture. So far I’ve spent almost 10 hours just cuting logs with a chainsaw and using a wheelbarrow to bring them to the garden plot. It’s been some serious work already and I think I may have to double my log collection to make the hugel as tall as I’d like. Near the end of today I placed the first layer of logs and started digging the soil surrounding the hugel and heaping it onto the logs. I hope to make the hugel 3ft tall and dig 3 feet surrounding it to make a 6th tall hugel like Paul suggests in his hugelkulture podcast video. So far this has already been a ton of physical work so I hope it pays off.

If I finish the hugel with time to spare before early may I’d also like to start a second flat conventional garden with a deep mulch for GAMCOD as well so I can compare the productivity of both methods.

Hey Tucker, thanks for sharing!
Sounds like an awesome plan, I'm excited to see your progress here.

A random heads up
7*26 = 182 7*28 = 196

You might be able to extend your bed an extra two feet, if you have the wood.

What type of climate are you growing in? How much rainfall do you typically get?

Clay McGowen wrote:Hey Tucker, thanks for sharing!
Sounds like an awesome plan, I'm excited to see your progress here.

A random heads up
7*26 = 182 7*28 = 196

You might be able to extend your bed an extra two feet, if you have the wood.

What type of climate are you growing in? How much rainfall do you typically get?

Thanks for the heads up. I may extend the growing area that extra 2 feet if I have enough logs. And I’m growing in upstate New York where the average rainfall is 35-40 inches per year

Welcome to Permies, Tucker! I look forward to seeing how your hugel progresses.

Permies is a big community with a lot of things going on. There is a thread called How permies works for reference.

I’ve made some big progress on the hugelkulture! So far I’ve spent approximately 19.5 hours of labor to make it by myself. And oh man it has been some real hard work chopping up all those logs hauling them over with a wheel barrow. The gigantic mound of dirt has been making my neighbors very curious. They’ve been asking questions about what on earth I’m doing lol.

The hugel is about 5ft tall currently if you measure from its lowest point in the dugout pit next to it. I’m not sure if I want to keep digging because the clay becomes almost rock hard at the depth I’m at now. The pits next to the hugel are also collecting water but I’m thinking that may be a good thing. I can just scoop the water with a bucket and use it to water the mound. I think what’s next is going to be hauling over some compost I’ve been working on(which isn’t much) and top dressing the hugel with that. And then covering the whole thing in lawn trimmings and leaf mulch. Our last frost date is in early may so I won’t be able to plant until then. But I’ll probably be starting some seedlings indoors soon.

I plan on planting some sunchokes, walking onion, potato’s, pumpkin, and turnips. I may also sprinkling in some corn and sunflower too but I’m skeptical on how well they will do in this terrible clay dirt.

Spring is upon us and the hugel bed is coming to life.
The sun chokes are exploding with growth! This is the first time I’ve ever grown them and they are just as vigorous as everyone says. So far the hugel is growing Sun chokes, pumpkins, barley, black beans,  corn, potato’s, amaranth,



I’ve also dug a second GAMCOD garden next to the hugel. I tilled up the soil with a grub hoe and mulched with lawn trimmings. It’s growing all the same stuff except for sun chokes.

Establishing the flat bed has been far less time intensive than the  hugel mound. I’m eager to see how they perform compared to each other.