hugelkulture test bed

It was a lot of work, digging the hole, but got it done over the weekend.

We dug down because we didn't have a lot of soil to fill with, so we figured we'd digg it up. We put a lot of wood in the hole and also threw in some twigs and leaves.

Will be interesting to see how it goes.

HugelKulture

 Recently came across this new philosophy for gardening.  It seems very interesting.  The idea is you bury wood etc.. in a ditch / hole and then cover with sod and soil, the idea being that the material under the soil holds considerable amounts of water and composts over time.  Many of the articles I read about this claimed that this is a great way to reduce need for watering claiming that in dry climates, hugelkulture gardens didn't need watering at all in summer!!

The pictures below are from saponaria-wortsandall.blogspot.com .  They represent two rows of cataloupe plantings.   Guess which one is the hugelkulture version.

The row on the right is the hugelkulture version




here it is close up



Here's the traditional planting version.

We're definitely going to give this a go this spring and summmer.