Annie Howell-Adams

Looks beautiful, could the orchard prunings go towards hugel mounds?

Third or 4th day, 65 degrees inside 38 outside, each day climbing.

I was just reading a gardening book, the author kept mentioning how such and such crop would grow in containers. Maybe you could pioneer 5 gallon bucket permaculture.
Sounds like you are healing from the eye ordeal, keep up the good work!

Awesome temp! Good idea on urine, there's certainly a never ending supply.

Day one, 42 degrees outside, 52 degrees inside the pile: 3 feet by 4 feet by 3+ feet tall

I just treated myself to a compost thermometer after turning my pile this morning and adding 10 buckets of manure. Anyway to move things along in wintertime?

My 20 x 20 community garden plot with 85 feet of hugel bed. This is a new way to garden for me, The mounds are layered with old wood, kelp, compost, soil, and recently composted llama manure. It's just January here in Washington. Everything is "cooking" for spring planting.

Adding more material to the hugel mounds, coffee grounds, layers of clayish dirt, compost, leaves and straw to cap it all off. The beds are 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. Not a huge hugel, we'll see how it works this growing season. The outer beds will acts as a wind buffer for inner bed. Thinking about making a few hoops to start to grow greens early under shelter.

Thanks Miles, we do have an interesting community. We recently voted to ban GMOs in our county, as well as jet-skis, it's great to live in a progressive county. Here are a few more photos. AN ancient fir tree, 4 feet at the base fell over several years ago. The interior was all rotten. I've hollowed it out and hauled it over to my garden plot. All fall there's been piles of kelp on the beaches too. It breaks down pretty fast and should add some nice minerals to the mix.

After reading about hugelkulture, and the idea of less frequent watering, I decided it would be great to try it out at my new community garden plot. I've taken pictures over the past month and a half that it took me to put this together, a few hours here and there. I started with a grassy plot, covered it with cardboard, wheelbarrowed in wood chips donated from the county road crew, found logs and kelp on the beaches of our island, (San Juan Island). Found a huge dead log that I dug out for loamy rotten wood, full of fungus. There was a bit of hauling with 5 gallon buckets, I hope this all works out.
The community garden folks let me dig out one of their full compost bins, that's the black gold on top. I'm thinking about bring in a thin layer of low grade clay-ish dirt for soil structure to cap off before spring planting.