Where are they now? hugelkultur updates?

Kai Walker wrote:LOL Looks like someone wrapped a basketball with banana tree leaves and called it a head of lettuce!

Dang wish mine would produce like that.
I have things starting to die already.

Might be because of the 12 inches of rain we got in the past 2 weeks though.
Dunno....

I see they had a mini excavator to use. We had a household small rototiller and 2 shovels to do ours.
And unbreakable hardpan 4-6 inches down too.

We were very fortunate my dad had a tractor that he hauled to our place and helped out with a lot of the soil hauling. This year we are building a second 100' completely by hand and after 1 month of working on it just in our spare time we are only halfway done. Our soil is sandy loam but big rocks in every shovel full. So it can be done, just takes much longer. They are worth the effort in our area!

Clara Teixeira wrote:

Kai Walker wrote:LOL Looks like someone wrapped a basketball with banana tree leaves and called it a head of lettuce!

Dang wish mine would produce like that.
I have things starting to die already.

Might be because of the 12 inches of rain we got in the past 2 weeks though.
Dunno....

I see they had a mini excavator to use. We had a household small rototiller and 2 shovels to do ours.
And unbreakable hardpan 4-6 inches down too.

We were very fortunate my dad had a tractor that he hauled to our place and helped out with a lot of the soil hauling. This year we are building a second 100' completely by hand and after 1 month of working on it just in our spare time we are only halfway done. Our soil is sandy loam but big rocks in every shovel full. So it can be done, just takes much longer. They are worth the effort in our area!

Mine is a box within a box style instead of one long one. It took us 5 1/2 months to build by hand. 17 tons of materials to only make it 1/2 height. It shrank 35% after the first year. Of that 17 tons we put in about 4 tons of used coffee grounds (wet of course). Oh and a bunch of doubled mowed leaves. Not to mention wood chips wood chips wood chips since the property owner wouldn't let us put in a lot of logs like we were supposed to.

It is about 30 feet long, 15-20 feet wide outside dimensions I think. Except the ends which are about 8-10 feet-ish.

In the middle I have an 18" walkway which can be entered from either end. Easier harvest and maintenance.

When I water I fill the inside walkway until it can't hold any more.
Water slowly filters into the base of the garden. Any excess runs out the outside bottom.

I uploaded a few pics. Can't do them all due to high cost of hotspot data :-(

We did surround the base of the garden with concrete blocks to help maintain the shape as time went on. And a 4 foot fence too.

Inside walkway we shored up the inner walls with plain 1 x 6's roughly and plain wood stakes to hold them. Inner concrete blocks help hold the walls further and act as baffles to keep water rushing from one end down to the other. We had a little grade to deal with.

And another yard grade directs excess water from the lawn right to the garden.

Every bit helps when summer rolls around.

To rehydrate the garden takes about 1,000 gallons of water (or about 1 hour of water pumped in through a 2 1/2 inch hose)
Last year we had to do this at least every week. This year I shouldn't have to do all that watering.

And boy did it get HOT HOT HOT!

Perhaps you could try that setup?

I did read that Hugelgardens should be a limited length and I think anything too long might be problematic. Dunno. A beginner here too.

We just encountered a problem.

We caught a landscape company spraying what the guy called 'all sorts of good things' on the neighbor's lawn today.

It smelled exactly like roundup and was drifting over onto my garden.

We cut a sample of a bad plant and showed it to him. He said that was due to wet feet. I told him only certain plants had the problem and that the garden was 20 inches high so no wet feet (although the soil is actually wet but no possible to sit in water due to the height).

The drift was so bad I could taste the poison in my mouth.

I told him that I did not want to eat poison. He said he too would like to picket Monsanto.

What a jerk.

I asked if he could spray when the wind was blowing a different direction. He ignored the question and replied "You are lucky to grow anything over there".


So if my hugelgarden has problems I now know why.

Finally found this thread.

I was going to upload the pix but couldn't find this thread.

Now I have to wait till I get back to decent internet AND can find this thread again.

I do have one Zucchini plant with gigantic leaves on it. Normal leaves are about as big as one's head. But this I think is about 50% bigger.

Keeping fingers crossed that everything else gets big too.

Hard to tell as so far this year is not a normal climate year.
Might be an awesome growing year for a change!

I did notice a lot of leaf curl on the tomato plants - high humidity?

And some yellowing of the strawberry leaves (soil must be really wet still).

Oh and some little slugs.

We did find 3 of those dreaded beetles that attack zucchini plants but only on one plant out of 3. Picked them off and tossed them out into the grass.

We exposed the inner core of that zucchini plant to more sun in hopes it will deter them or allow beneficial insects to get them for us.

And still inundated with loads of tiny ants for some reason.

Ont tomato plant is full of tiny white things on it. White Aphids perhaps? Saw some lady bugs (or at least looked like them) on that plant and around other plants too.

And finally the honeybees discovered my newly blooming borage

Will have some Zinnias blooming here soon too so they can have some protein.

Trying to make them a 'Golden Corral' if you will!

But for them, free.

Another update:

Had to replace another tomato plant for the 3rd time in one spot. This time we dug deep and threw away the dirt and put different dirt with miracle grow potting soil in the hole.

If this one (3rd one now) bites the dust either not plant anything there or plant a different plant altogether.

Soil was not anaerobic either nor soggy.

Here are some comparison pix.

Hugel Zucchini leaf is about 50% or larger than a normal Zucchini leaf.

And a decoration by the hugelgarden my kid made today