Richard Jones

This year I repaired a hoop house that is on top of a hugelkultur bed. Then, I built a raised bed on top and filled it with forest soil from down by our seasonal creek and moved it to the sunny garden. Added compost containing chicken manure from a local nursery. Drip irrigation keeps the plants happy. I have a second hoop house that is done the same way except it is 8 feet longer.
Both are doing really well.

I went to Paul's hugelkultur class in San Diego County 2013. The pictures show the progress over the years. I've been getting better crops every year since 2018. In 2024, the uneven wearing down of the wood in the hugelkultur made the wire mesh floor of the hoop house rip at the seams letting a squirrel in and he ate a cauliflower plant! Also, the whole hoop house had tilted 18" lower on the low slope side. So, time to repair. The drawing shows how I plan to make the whole thing better. I've been getting lots of tomatoes, carrots, kale, melons, garlic, peas, beans and lettuce.

Here in the high desert riparian area oak trees and spring one hour east of San Diego, I have sunken hugel beds. The tops are flat with forest soil, compost, mulch and irrigation. To keep out gophers and squirrels, I have 1/4" wire mesh on the bottom and 1/2" wire mesh hoop houses on top. Tall enough for corn, pollinators can come and go. Rainy winters soak the beds, drip irrigation and mulch keep it moist. Some of the soil washes away, so I'm happy to know that 12" of soil is what I want to keep above the bottom mesh. Soil and water spills onto the path, so maybe I'll use bricks to make a low wall. Wood breaks down quickly. I also have small cages for strawberries and asparagus. Medium size for raspberries and grapes.  

I have a snorkel wood fired hot tub. Last week, I got the solar thermal flowing. It will be a drain down system. It might work best to heat the tub with wood and try to maintain the heat with solar. Here in the high desert of Southern California, by far I use it as a cold tub in the summer. The solar powered swamp cooler works best after the sun is behind the hill. Some of the oak trees have died. So, I like to burn some of the oak in the winter/ rainy? season. Spring and Fall I would rather use solar. One time, years ago, I made too much smoke. Someone called in and a fire truck showed up. I was recognized by one of the guys who asked if I knew a firefighter. I did know him and got off with a warning that next time I would have to pay for the fire truck to come out. That's how I got motivated for a solar thermal hot tub.  

I have a snorkel stove hot tub. It takes 3-4 hours to heat it. When the water is 90 degrees, don't add any more wood no matter how anxious your bathers are. It will be 102 degrees about a half hour later. If it's 106, people will go in and  out quicker. I find adding water is a waste of water. I put a plywood cover over it and go again the next morning. I got 2 free aluminum fin solar collectors and hooked them up last fall. Just now getting ready to try that. I get the most use out of it as a cool pool in summer.

Wild roses next to the hose where I wash buckets after putting food scraps into the compost. I save the rose hips for tea. Two almond trees are nearby. This is in the oak woods of the San Diego, CA back country.

Reading the other posts here I would add that I have a thin layer of wood mulch on the garden. Watering with the hose gets past it. I check the soil to see if it's moist at all. The leaves on the almond trees are drooping a little. I'm going to rake away the leaves, loosen the soil with a 6' pry bar and water with a hose. Things like that need to be done at the end of the dry season one time. We had a thunderstorm but the ground was back to dust a few hours later. Lucky the artesian spring is still flowing.

I have been using about 6" of sycamore leaves around the plum, apricot, almond trees and pomegranite. For the veggie garden and berries, I use wood chips from the oak tree that fell into the road and the forest service chipped it. I'm on the last bag of it in the second year. Deep watering stakes get the irrigation water under the mulch for the trees. The veggies get soaked by a hose about once a week which helps the daily drip irrigation.

Here is my peach tree that showed up in the compost pile. I got many good peaches until it died in 2019. We got two wet winters after that here in So. Cal. The almond trees and the plum and apricot that I bought at nurseries are still doing fine. I tried scions around the hugelkultur. Some of them lived for about 6 months and leafed out nicely in the spring. Then, the squirrels got them. I remember when a squirrel ran across the yard, up the peach tree, grabbed one, ran over and climbed on top of the hot tub. He spun the fruit rapidly and looked at me as he ate the fruit down to the pit. Then, he's like, "you can have the pit" and ran off. Now, I have an effective anti-squirrel deterrent. It's a cylinder made of hardware cloth with wonky bits bent all around at the top which is about 3' off the ground. I finally got lots of plums, apricots and almonds. The property is at 3400 ft. elevation, a sweet spot in the high desert with artesian spring and oak trees. September 2019 - I went to OUR Ecovillage, driving from near the Mexican border to Vancouver Island. I had a grocery bag of my plums with me that needed to be eaten. The customs agent at the Canadian border asked if I had any stone fruit. I said, "No, I ate the last four today".

I rinse through a stainless steel screen and put the seeds on a plate. It's very dry where I live, so the seeds dry very well next to a window.