A Bigger Hugelkultur

lavender in it's new home

We're building a bigger hugelkultur.  A hugelkultur is a type of garden with large pieces of wood on the bottom and smaller bits inside.  As the wood breaks down it creates food for the plants and helps the mound to hold water.  If planted well the plants help each other out as well. The strawberries in the mini hugel were the catalyst for this garden.  They're just not getting enough sunlight where they are.  When we planned the mini hugel the tree above it was bare.  That tree filled in nicely and so now we have a shade problem.  The new and bigger hugel will be about 5'x10' and a couple of feet high.  This will put us over our goal of growing about 100 square feet of food in our yard.  The mini hugel is doing so well that we're looking forward to trying out this garden concept on a larger scale. A really neat border is in the planning stages but I'll just hold on to that idea for now.

the base of the new hugelkultur

Saturday:
I laid out cardboard in the area we decided on for the garden.  On top, I threw down the sticks we'd been collecting from our and our neighbor's yards.  After a good watering the new garden sat for the night.  We picked up a few bags of good topsoil at Ace Hardware today.  Tomorrow after we collect more wood we'll add it to the pile.

Rufus helping out

Barkley not so much helping out

Sunday:

branches, sticks and dry grass

After playing a round and a half of disc golf we walked back over the course and collected branches of various sizes.  Our friend helped us load up the car with wood and we brought it on home.   While my beautiful man worked on mowing the yard with a weedeater (way cheaper than a lawn mower) the dogs and I built up the new logs on the garden site.  Next I scooped up several buckets full dried grass and weed clippings from the work my beautiful man did yesterday.  Some clippings got thrown on top while the rest got worked in to the spaces below.  At this point I watered the mound well for two reasons.  We wanted to saturate these bottom layers to help the dry material start breaking down.  This big pile of branches, sticks, leaves, and dried grass seemed a lot like a big pile of kindling.  Next we added two buckets of partially decomposed compost the same way as the dried clippings.  Then we poured on 5 bags of topsoil.  My beautiful man lifted the bags and poured them on while I shook some of the bigger branches to help the soil filter through.  Finally the hugel got it's last watering of the day.

end of day 1

Tomorrow we will add more bags of topsoil and possibly fill out the bottom of the pile with more wood.  Once those tasks are finished we'll move the strawberry plants and add two more.  We'll also be starting some seeds for various fruit and vegetable plants.  Plants that enjoy light shade and slightly cooler temps will go on the north side while full sun and heat loving plants will face south.

gifts from my beautiful man

Monday:
My beautiful man, his name is Reggie by the way, woke up early today to run a few errands.  When he got home I went outside to meet him and he took me by the hand and said "Come see what I brought you."  He'd gone back to the disc golf course with his axe and cut up this huge fallen branch I'd wanted.  He also brought me 7 more bags of soil, 6 for the new hugel and one for the mini!  What an amazing man I have!

new logs added on day 2

The new branches were added to the sides to give us a wider base.   The 6 bags of topsoil got dumped on top and worked into the spaces.  I watered well after each bag to help the soil settle as much as possible.  I'd rather it settle now than after everything is planted.  Picking up those bags so high and holding them to pour them out made for a nice little arm workout!

I transplanted the strawberries from the mini hugel.  They look a little stressed right now but hopefully they'll perk up in a few days.  Two new strawberry plants also went in.  I'm expecting them to do much better here.  They'll have full sun and companion plants to help them grow big and tasty.  A couple of herbs that had been biding their time in clay pots while they waited for a new home got to move in too.  Several butterflies (and a few wasps) came to visit the new garden already.  They'll be excited to see that I sprinkled some butterfly garden seeds all over.  Soon we'll have some lettuce, chives, tomatillos, carrots and a bunch of other food and flowers coming up.  (See below for a full list of plants and seeds.)

hugel's first earth worm friend

I got a start on that mystery border.  You'll just have to wait.  When I was digging for the border I found 3 little earth worms and they all got relocated to the hugel.  Maybe they'll be happier there and make little earth worm families.

I'll make some posts as the plants start to fill in and the hugel evolves.  We're expecting a lot of food and we're happy to finally be over our 100 square feet of food goal.

the new hugelkultur all planted!

 Plants:
7 strawberry
1 lavender
1 lemon balm
2 okra
1 cucumber
1 thyme
1 oregano

Seeds:
salad bowl lettuce
purple tomatillo
watermelon
dill
borage (to attract bees)
black turtle bush beans (beans help strawberries)
chives
touchon carrot (friend of cucumber)
genovese basil
evening sun sunflower mix
black seeded simpson lettuce
triomphe de farcy bush beans (to help strawberries)
cilantro
dwarf nasturtium
"song bird mix" flowers
"bring home the butterflies" flowers
bell peppers