Update. Hügelkultur-Style

Posted on August 9, 2014 by Sarah

The pumpkins look a little sad in the second photo, but it was about 105*F when I took it and one of our days to water. So excuse their lack of pep. Our plan to water every 4-days continues to work out well. The veggies do not grow as quickly, but they are flowering, fruiting, and producing while conserving water. A few sad pumpkin leaves is better than none at all.

This week I have seen (and tasted) some green beans, pumpkin flowers, baby cucumbers, the beginnings of cabbage heads, sad lettuce (not really the right temp for greens), and a few pepper and basil plants lurking about.

Not bad for watering only twice a week!

Hügelkultur Update

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Sarah

Our first hügelkultur is now about eight weeks old. It has grown massively, especially considering that everything was started from seed. We have kale, lettuces, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, Swiss chard, cilantro, dill, fennel, green onions, cabbages, basil, and peppermint. The beauty of the hügelkultur is that it grows in a tall mound, actually doubling or tripling our space. Right now we only water every four days to conserve water. Next year when it is more established we hope to water even less (or, dare I say, not at all). Fingers crossed folks.

5-Year Garden Plan

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Sarah

We think we can get this all built and fenced in within five years. Hügelkultur beds are time consuming to create, but they are well worth the effort considering how much water is saved. We will try to get the “daisy” shape made this year, the left side of rectangles in 2015, the center circle in 2016, and the right side rectangles in 2017, all the while building up the orchard along the road. That plan should give us a whole extra year to bleed over into.

Our First Hügelkultur

Posted on May 6, 2014 by Sarah

Ta da! With the work involved in actually getting a large hügelkultur bed like this together, I am kind of surprised how happy I am with it. Not that putting a hügelkultur together is difficult. It isn’t. But it does require a lot of digging (when you want to use as little “outside” dirt as possible) and scavenging for wood.

We still have enough logs and old stumps to make several more large hügelkultur beds, luckily, so we plan to put more in the garden area this year. Perhaps it is just that when building the first of anything, it seems so much harder and seems to take so much longer. It didn’t discourage us though. The end result actually inspired us to make more.

I am working on a step-by-step tutorial while we build our second hügelkultur and we can chart its progress and the plant growth. With this first hügelkultur, I was so busy trying to keep Trevor from forging too far ahead that I didn’t get a chance to take all the detailed photos I wanted to. He has a tendency to want to finish things up quickly and when I get distracted by visitors or small humans (read: Cami), he hurries to finish things up as he thinks it should look instead of asking which step is next.

I’m a Virgo and he is an Aries… for some people that explains it all.

Our plan for the garden is to create brick path from the driveway leading into a circle in the cleared center with a relaxing bench. Then we will have six flower petal-shaped hügelkultur beds coming off of the circle. The rest of the 1/3 acre area will be made up of other beds in fluid shapes and lines. It will take a few years to complete this project, of course, but with the completion of this first planting bed, we are very excited to continue on.

We may even finish the flower-shaped beds by the time Google Earth updates. 😉

The hole Trevor dug out to start our hügelkultur was approximately 20′ long, 4′ at its widest point, and 1′ deep.

Hügelkultur bed with about half of the wood piled up inside. We used wood found from around the property and checked that it was not pressure treated. This photo was taken from inside the circle… Can you see the flower petal shape?