I made a 24 foot hugelkultur bed today!!! Twice the size went 1/3rd faster due to having a bit more experience (I did the 12' one a few days ago).
The seeds I planted are:
Hazelnut
Black walnut
Buckwheat
Quinoa
Mammoth red clover (n)
Chickling vetch (n)
Yellow blossom sweet clover (n)
Austrian winter pea (n)
Crimson clover (n)
Mullein
Common vetch (n)
Alfalfa (n)
Radish
Red cowpeas (n)
Dock
Catnip
Echinaceae
Rhubarb
Lamb's quarters
Tendril peas (n)
Kohlrabi
Sepp Holzer grain
Beardless barley
Sunflowers
6 comfrey rootlets
7 sunchoke tubers
The nitrogen fixers were bigger handfuls than the other stuff to satisfy the "mostly" criteria. I built this adjoining Beau Davidson's 12' hugel. We planned them to curve to follow the fence and also overlap the hugel row we did earlier in the week. I had to cut down 3 trees since they were in the way but I got to use them inside the hugel. And the branches became mulch
The stumps were about centered in the hugel and the base layer was the trunks of the trees. Other wood was scavenged from left over junkpole fence pieces.
I did the trench on either side approach for this hugel and found that it's quicker if you can line up the excavator with the trench and dig towards yourself. The mulches I used were straw, lambsquarters, mullein, knapweed, some green tall plant, peeled tree bark and boughs from the trees I cut down. It was snowing pretty strongly during the mulching. But maybe I can count the snow as another mulch
The snow helped the seeds to stick as I broadcast them. I planted the walnuts in a clump and made a row of hazelnuts along the border between Beau and my hugel.
For the final pictures, I changed the landscape so much that I couldn't remember where my starting photos were taken from. So there are three final pics. For the vertical tape measure shots the tape is at 7'.
Mike is a homesteader, gardener, engineer, wood worker, blacksmith and most recently a greenhouse designer. He heard about permaculture in 2015 and has been learning ever since.
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