Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Hugelkultur 2



Where we are at part two of our Hugelkultur. We just finished putting all the logs inside it so the next thing we are going to do is put left over hay that the sheep left in the barn and on top of that put in sheep manure on top. After that we cover it up with the dirt and plant what we want to plant which in this case is going to be my blackberries.

We are putting together a video too explaining a lot more of Hugelkultur

Sam

Monday, March 7, 2011

Hugelkultur garden bed




We started a new project called Hugelkultur- Bed.

"Hugelkulture is the practice of composting large woody material to create a raised garden bed. It is a way of dealing with excess amounts of woody garden wastes, for example prunings, hedge clippings, brassica stems, or brashwood.

The name comes from German - hügelkultur translates as "hill culture".

As the years pass, the deep soil of the raised bed becomes incredibly rich and loaded with soil life. As the wood shrinks, it makes more tiny air pockets - so your hugelkultur becomes self tilling. The first few years, the composting process will slightly warm the soil giving a slightly longer growing season, in temperate and cold climates".

The main two reasons we love it is that 1. It takes our wasted fallen logs from our pecan trees and makes a use for it. 2. It will act like a sponge in a couple of yrs which will save us in watering we are hoping especially in this southTexas heat!

Some people don't even dig holes they just pile the wood and bury it with dirt, but we wanted to dig the holes. Because of the clay we have in our area we could only go down about 1 foot. We did a bit of it with the plow from our tractor then the rest we did by hand.

We plan to plant blackberrys in this bed and hopefully a covercrop on top.

I will post more photos as we fill the bed.

Sam