Tyler Ludens wrote:I am having good success with buried wood beds, putting logs and sticks in a trench or hole down to a couple of feet deep, covering with additional organic material and soil. This seems to be holding water much better than parts of the garden which were not treated this way but instead just had sheet mulch. But it is a LOT of work, and unless you are very fit, might require excavating equipment. Sheet mulch helps some but in my experience is not as effective as buried wood.
Sorry, just saw you're renting, so I would not advise buried wood, it is too much work for a rental property unless you're feeling especially charitable, because the benefits may not be immediate.
Please pardon my horrible reading comprehension.....
Thanks for your reply Tyler. Yeah, digging sunken hugelkultur beds is not something I would want to do around this rental property. But I would be up for dragging some logs and sticks out of the woods and piling dirt on them. The landlord really doesn't care what the yard looks like which is cool
It's just totally wild mountain grasses right now.
The greenhouse area is only 10' x 20'. I did a fair amount of shovel excavating to level the ground on which it stands. I would dig up the beds to lay down sticks and hay if it would enable us to water way less. We had a catchment tank with a pump on a timer to a drip system last year but it was a bit of PITA.
Edit: Just want to add that the raised beds range between 1.5' to 3' deep before it hits the pink granite underneath so it wouldn't be that much digging to lay down sticks and hay beneath.
