Hugelkultur – Year 2

Last year's foray into gardening was a very successful one. Not that I got a huge amount of food from my small garden, but I enjoyed the process, learned things and impressed myself by staying active in the garden throughout the summer. 

This year, I am expanding. I've spent the last couple of mornings (early, before the blackflies wake up), completing the two hugelkultur beds that I started building last summer. 

The process feels like "mud pie architecture" to me: fitting together logs, branches, twigs and rotten wood, then stuffing leaves (and sometimes cardboard) into the cracks. 

Then comes the task of mixing up some soil. 

And then spreading the soil on top of the mounds. 

One of the two new mounds is the same style and shape as the one I built last year. Let's call it Hugel II.

The other one I'm calling Flattop. This one is more of a raised bed than a mound, with about 16 square feet of gardening space on the top and no soil spread down the side. I'm looking forward to seeing how it will perform.

Next, I plan to make a raised bed with "log cabin" sides to grow some potatoes and beets. Why buy lumber when I have so many logs lying around that will contain soil without costing me a dime? Besides, converting some of the strewn-about logs into gardening space tidies the place up a little bit...

And, just because all of the photos in this post are primarily brown, here is a picture of the beautiful bouquet I got at the West Dublin Market on Saturday as my "welcome home" present to myself.