Hugel up a new garden

During the dark days of February, I had a weekend with not much to do except putter around the house and check on the seedlings.  I don't remember exactly how it happened but ... I discovered "Stumble Upon".  Crap, I was instantly addicted!  All I had to do was identify a few areas of interest, give the thumbs up on a handful of pages and next thing you know, it's 9 hours later and I'm being amazed by all sorts of amazing things on the ol' world wide web.

During those blink-of-an-eye 9 hours, I stumbled upon a website about Hugelkultur.  This is a variation on the lasagna garden.  But what is so awesome about it is that you can use up yard waste.  I highly recommend you check out a site from someone who really knows what they are talking about, but the gist of it is that you take LOGS ... you heard me, entire trees if you want ... and other debris and toss it into a pile (okay, maybe not entire trees, you'll want to determine the appropriate length of your garden).  Then cover it up with mulch, compost, and then a pile of soil.  Some of them are really RAISED, as in many feet high due to the logs as the base.  The amazing thing is that the logs will continue to decompose, and will literally (yes, literally) self-till the garden for the first few years.   Eventually the height will decrease due to the decomposition of the harder material, which is fine with me, as I don't really want a 4-foot high garden (actually, that doesn't sound so bad for weeding).


The previous owners here left a pile of branches in a spot that I thought was perfect for compost, so my plan was to hugel this pile of yardwaste, which would clear up the space and create a raised garden all at once.  Although typical of my approach, I kind of didn't fully follow the method and did things my own way once I got started ...





I actually spent 6 months very slowly getting this new garden together.  It started in the early spring when I laid down some cardboard moving boxes just to get them out of the house and I held them in place with some logs. 

I changed the location of the garden several times before the snow melted, and the final spot came after I had a load of soil delivered in April and the truck made very deep grooves in the very wet grass during the dumping.  So I decided to cover up the tire tracks with the garden. 

I eventually added more logs (most were pine logs I found near an old firepit - I can't use them in my wood stove and don't do a lot of outdoor fires) and branches that had fallen during the winter. 

I also kept extending the garden as I obtained more cardboard boxes (from my new lawnmower, from my new wheelbarrow ...).

Long after the snow melted off the pile of yard waste, I went back to clear out the branches (and newly grown foliage) that I had originally planned to use.  It turns out there were just a few weeds covering a huge fully-composted mound of beautiful soil!  So some of that went on the garden.

Then compost and mulch (both wood chips and hay) was next.  And what took so long was the final layer: the soil.  There is only about an inch or so of soil on this garden right now.  I just wanted to get the mulch covered up for the winter.  Depending on how well it all breaks down, I might not have to do anything else.  There is a good chance that when the hay breaks down, soil will fall through the cracks in the logs underneath ... but if necessary, I can add more soil in the spring.

 
It took forever, but was not really much actual effort (thanks to a friend that helped with the last final layer!).  And it's full of nutritious mulches, compost and decaying matter that should serve well whichever plants end up on this spot next growing season!

Cardboard Garden (a.k.a. lasagna garden)

Note: This post was written a couple of years before I moved to my current location (and when I was still married, hence the "we" when my new posts are all "I").  I had wanted to start a blog back then but never got around to it.  But since it’s already written …

We moved up to the farm on a slightly more permanent basis (still keeping an apartment in Ottawa as well) in June 2011.  We were left with dozens of cardboard moving boxes which normally would have been recycled … if it weren’t for the fact that we wanted more garden space!  We weren’t too worried about a new garden right away, as we had enough to do that year just getting settled in, so we planned it for the following spring.  I laid down boxes throughout the summer in the area where we wanted the new garden to be dug, to stunt the growth of the grass underneath (anyone who has dug a new area, with or without the use of a rototiller, will know the difficulty in digging into grass roots).

During the fall,  I soaked down small areas at a time, threw down a layer of mulch (in this case, we had been given a great big load from the Hydro One guys after they were clearing trees from the lines – who knew you could get free mulch?  A neighbor who knew the deal hooked us up with one of the drivers), then I shoveled topsoil and some manure onto it.

 Here is the end result before the snow started falling …

 So then the snow fell and months later, a glorious March arrived.  We had a very early hot spell this spring, and we had a good chance to check out the cardboard garden situation.  Super awesome!!