It has been a while since I posted…life gets in the way. I have been hard at work learning to be a ‘real’ teacher (as one of my students stated), and have had not much time for anything at home besides simple maintenance. I have managed (or we have managed, as my daughter has helped a lot) to start and gradually work on one project; a new Hugelkultur bed.
We have an old chicken tractor made from PVC pipe (electrical conduit) and chicken wire, it is so old that it can’t be moved anymore. We decided it would make a good vegetable bed as it is covered and secure and has a decent amount of space inside.
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Before we started working on the bed. The tin thing is a chicken roost.
First we spread the rags, newspaper and cardboard over the grass; there wasn’t enough to cover it all so we are working in sections. Then we piled the sticks and some larger branches where we wanted the beds to be. On top of this we piled the contents of the bottom of the rabbit cage; poop and newspaper litter soaked in pee. We are in the process of collecting manure to add to the beds and a neighbor has offered to bring home some composted pig manure from her work for us (thank you L). Once the bed is piled up with sticks, manure and other compostables we will cover it all with a layer of straw mulch and leave it to compost for a few weeks. I am looking forward to planting out another low water use bed…more broccoli, here we come.
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There will be a thin path from the door to the middle of the bed, the rest will be planted out with vegetables
Cool! That’ll be a high concentration of decomposing organic matter in one place; I’m sure your plants are gonna love it. Keep us posted on how it goes.
I will update a couple more times. It is sort of like planting straight into a compost heap…the vegetables go wild.
Nice work! I started one awhile ago … its sitting waiting for the next layer 🙂
It’s a forgiving medium; it just waits until you have something else to add to it. We have added a good layer of pig manure to ours now (composted of course).
I like forgiving mediums 🙂