Build a Hugelkultur - PEP BB gardening.straw.hugelkultur

I built a hugelkultur at Allerton Abbey!  For the BB20 event, Opalyn, Penny, Beau and I made our hugels in a row.  Mine was on the left.  We marked them out with white stakes.  In one or two pictures there are some stakes further to the left of my hugel which were optimistic but eventually abandoned.

The contents were clay-ey soil, punky logs laying around and cut off pieces from the junk pole fence.  The wood was all conifer and came from within 100' of the hugel.  The mulches were mullein, trimmed up lower tree boughs, old hay bales and sawdust.  

The seeds are:
Austrian winter peas (n)
alfalfa (n)
black locust (n)
tendril peas (n)
Sepp Holzer grain
buckwheat
hazelnuts
peach
sunflower
vetch (n)
golden clover (n)
yellow blossom sweet clover (n)
sunchokes
comfrey.  The comfrey is the stick-like thing you can see sticking out of the bucket and I got 5 pieces from it.

We did the trench on both sides approach using the excavator.  The tape measure in the end is set to 7' and held up with a shovel.  One of my final photos from the same spot as the before picture was slightly blocked by the excavator so I included another final picture from a nearby spot.  FYI the stump that is at the edge of my hugel is about at the midpoint of the 12 feet.  The white stakes sometimes had to be removed before they disappeared but in the final picture you can see my two stakes.

Hugeling in a blizzard! There's nothing quite like tucking in seeds on a freshly mounded bed for a wee winter snooze. Hope I get to see what this'll do out at Allerton Abbey.

My 12' is conjoined with Mike's 24'. It is demarcated in most the pics by stakes or a change in mulch appearance. Final size is a couple feet larger than the requirements in each dimension to accomodate the curve and satisfy the demands of the site.

Dug and built with the excavator.
Seeds comprised of (in order of greatest volume, Nitrogen fixers comprising well over 80% of seed count):

Yellow Blossom Clover (n)
Crimson Clover (n)
Golden Clover (n)
Giant Clover (n)
Alfalfa
Buckwheat
Chickling Vetch
Lamb's Quarters (mulch combo)
Mullein (mulch combo)
Holzer Grain (exactly 40 seeds)
Austrian Winter Peas (n)
Black Locust (n)
Peach
Hazelnut

3 Sunchoke tubers
3 Comfrey root cuttings

Mulches:
Conifer branches from site logging and trimming
Straw from the Abbey
Sawdust
Mullein
Lamb's Quarters

For a more detailed account of my adventures in building this Hügelkultur, see My first Hügelkultur adventure for PEP [Log].  

To Certify That the BB is Completed:
- Two pics of the site before the work is started with the intended location marked out.
      o probably marked with wood laid on the ground that will soon be buried!



- Three pics of three different stages of construction - showing the contents of the hugelkultur




- One pic when the hugelkultur is completely built but not planted or mulched showing it is 7 feet tall (1x3 board is 7 ft long in photo)


- Pics of all the stuff about to be planted












- A paragraph or two of what wood was used and where it came from, what was planted, what mulches were applied and anything else interesting

This Hügelkultur project meets the requirements for the Sand, Straw, and Wood badges combined (6 ft + 12 ft + 24 ft = 42 ft) at over 50 ft long by over 10 ft wide by at least 7 ft high - not counting the foot I dug down on each side to help stabilize the outermost bottom logs. I used mostly wind blown Big Leaf Maple and Red Alder logs that were already partially rotten from laying on the ground nearby for a few years. Some birch got added as well. The soil came from three nearby mounds formed a few years ago when I scraped up areas taken over by blackberries and then let the mounds decompose.  I applied at least 4 kinds of mulch including stemmy hay, hardwood sawmill shavings, Big Leaf Maple leaves, pea husks, skunk cabbage leaves, and lawn clippings for mulch.  I planted using polycultures at least a dozen different species, mostly nitrogen fixers, including:
1) several apple cores
2) 12 sunchokes (3 for the Sand BB, 3 for Straw BB, 6 for Wood BB)
3) 12 comfrey (3 for the Sand BB, 3 for Straw BB, 6 for Wood BB)
4) Buttercup squash
5) October beans
6) garlic
7) shallots
8) cilantro
9) Delicata squash
10) black corn
11) date pits
12) Sepp grains (12 for the Sand BB, 40 for Straw BB, 100 for Wood BB)
13) Lummi Island Wildflower Mix  (Common Camas, Yarrow, Many-leaved Lupine, Fireweed, Woolly Sunflower, Pearly Everlasting, Douglas Aster)
14) White beans
15) Golden Bantam sweet corn
16) Vanessa Dwarf Blue Curled Kale
17) Bush Blue Lake garden bean
18) Zinnia
19) Viva la Dulce Vita Blend Basil
20) Easy Peasy Pea
21) Connecticut Field Pumpkin
22) Fingerling potatoes
23) Regular potatoes
24) Nettle
25) Snow berry
26) Salmon berry
27) Elderberry
28) Foxglove
29) Willow
30) 11 more apples
31) Crimson clover
32) Medium Red clover

- Two pics of the site after the work is complete from the same two locations as the beginning pictures.
      o include some people or something in the pics so we can gauge that the size is probably correct