Linda Warren

Thank you all! Will order radish seeds and get planting.

S. Bengi - our Hugelbeets are fine - no lime in them. Just the raised beds. Sorry I wasn't more clear.

John, thanks for all your ideas. Do most radishes have such aggressive roots? None of us like radishes, so I'm wondering if we could use a smaller variety and then just till them in for organic matter in the fall along with the chips

OR
would there be a better choice of plant if we are going to till in for organic matter?

I think those are my last questions :-0 ..........maybe

Linda

Hi all!

John, I will order seeds and plant radish right away. We will begin getting frost here in Sept, but no snow until Mid Nov. So I'm thinking we could till in the chips, clay, char, radish sometime in Oct. Or should we till in Sept and plant radish after tilling? It will be frosting by then.

I'm wondering since our situation is probably 70% sand, 15% manure, 15% alfalpha and this has settled 6" below the top edge of the bed - how much material should we be adding? I'm guessing 3-4-inches of chips/sawdust and less than an inch of clay and less than an inch of char? Then till or hoe.

I watched the bio-char video a few years ago - will watch again. Thanks! In thinking about it, we won't be doing big burns before fall, but I can add the remains all winter long from the woodstove.

Leila, we did our Hugelbeets totally different (no lime). Most of our acreage is forest, but there was an area that the previous owner had planted grass for many years. We used the back hoe and scraped off the sod, then we dug another two feet deeper. The trenches were approx 3-4 feet wide, about 3 feet deep and 40 in the length. We then dragged dead trees from our forest, then smaller sticks, then went on the sod (upside down) and dirt. We planted the blueberries, then topped with cedar chips for aciditiy. So, our Hugelbeets are only about 12-inches above ground.

We figured we had to dig the trenches in order to have enough dirt to put on top. This area is far from the house. And we did not want to dig up what little grassy area we had left in order to fill our raised beds that are close to the house. Sadly, if I just would have left the lime out, it seems would have had a good start.

Our average rainfall is 22-inches and our average snowfall is 65-inches - so the beds were not dry.

Any thoughts on a cover crop?

Hi John,

Thank you, thank you for your response!!

So, would this work: let the garden finish growing

Then in the fall: incorporate several inches of chips and a small amount of char. Then plant a cover crop to incorporate green matter for spring (which one?).
Our choices for chips would be: birch, larch or pine


We do not have friends with cats, but could we just purchase the kitty litter? Could we incorporate with all the above?

Would it hurt to (cringe) till it one more time? The stuff is so hard that even a pitch fork won't work it. The other option is we have a backhoe - we could scoop out a several inches and DH could stir, mix, have a dirt party and put it back in.

Hey all,

Virgin gardener here - Put in 3 Hugelbeets and several traditional raised beds last year. Planted blueberries in the Hugelbeets which are doing OK.
Our problem is we have no dirt - we have sand - this made this Hugelbeets difficult. We thought we were being smart when we built the raised beds and did tiny layers of sand, green cow manure and alfalfa - we sprinkled in some lime to heat it up. We let it sit all winter, went out to plant and pretty much hard concrete. (Maybe it was the lime!)

So, my husband thought he would till it to break it up. He did. We planted. It rained and turned back to cement. At first even weeds weren't growing. Some plants are doing OK, others just died. We'd really like to greatly improve. Just don't know what to add. We figure we need at least 4-inches of something (?) We do not have good access to green organic matter, but do have access to a variety of chips and/or sawdust. (Have watched Back to Eden - so chips seem interesting.) We live in N Idaho - only 90 frost free days.

Any advice appreciated. Thank you!