Tag: Hugelkulture

2016 Winter planning and a year in review

2016 Project and Goal Planning

Winter is a slow outdoor season for obvious reasons. I’ve had to do some pest proofing of various trees and bushes but for the most part we just wait for snow and then marvel at the resulting white. December I begin spring planning. Last years planning involved a lot of tree purchasing and mapping out of various earthworks. Dreams of our greenhouse, pergola and water harvesting mechanisms were also included.

We accomplished some of those tasks this year along with a lot of tasks that weren’t pre-planned. This year we managed the following:

Gosh, I’m getting tired thinking about the things we did this year. Still a lot to accomplish though. The major projects I had wanted to get done this year were not done. Now that I am not working these will be at the top of my project list. The pergola, the greenhouse and starting all fruit trees from seed. Because of the loss of my income I’m going to make a real push at growing my own from seed and growing root stocks to graft from the successful experimental trees.

Also on the list is improved food production in the kitchen garden and we are planning to butcher the pigs at home  . I am trying not to set us too many tasks as house maintenance often surprises us. I know we need to repaint the house and probably caulk the windows ASAP.

One major project I want to take on is building a natural swimming pond that is also going to collect roof water. I admit, that will probably be #1 on my list. Stay tuned for that. I have a habit of over doing ponds. Hopefully this one will be sealed better than the last one I dug.

Other than that I’m preparing the basement now for the kids and for seedling growing. I’m also managing our permaculture group. Whoo. I’m glad I quit my job now. I’m going to be BUSY!

Sunken Hugelkulture

Sunken Hugelkulture

Hugelkulture isn’t something I looked too much into. We don’t have access to a lot of wood at our house and it’s so dry here I didn’t believe it would work well anyway. Last year I pruned our wind break line heavily. We had a lot of death and I was tired of looking at dead trees. So we finally had access too wood. Not a huge amount but enough to play around with. So I decided to try hugelkulture, sunken hugelkulture.

So like all of our projects we brought out the Kubota tractor and dug a hole. This hole was less than 24″ deep (power and water lines are usually 24″ deep) and around 8×8′ in size. Once the hole was dug (which I didn’t get pictures of) I began filling it with dead wood, biochar and chicken bedding.

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I then covered it all back up and added a final layer of compost on the top.

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I put tires along both ends of the sunken hugel. One line for potatoes and another for tomatoes. I then filled the tires with biochar and compost.

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I planted sugar snap peas in the middle of the hugel and put a crib mattress frame for them to climb up.

We mounded compost and planted the corn seeds in the mounds. Around the mounds we planted bush beans. In the gaps between the tires I planted basil and other herbs.

This last weekend I brought over a wooden trough we got for free from the local Kubota store, filled it with dirt and now all I have to do is wait.

I’m not planting out my hard grown tomatoes until I know they are going to have ideal conditions.

Here are the tomatoes I grew from seed this year. This is the first time I’ve ever been successful. I think it’s because I put them in an unused fish tank with lights.

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