Some of you may remember my thread on purchasing my first home. Well, after months of unfucking the place, my wonderful girlfriend and I finally got the free time for some prepping.

I am a bit of a Jack Spirko fanboy. And if any of you listen to his podcast, you know about hugelkultur gardening. We decided to try it out for ourselves. I freely admit I really don't know what I'm doing. And other than helping my parents weed their garden when I was a child, this is my first real attempt.

So let me show you what we did:

We constructed a simple frame using 2x6x12s for the walls, and 4x4s for the corners and middle support. We then started piling wood in the frame.





Finished with the wood. I hope its enough or not too much.



Now its time to add the soil. We regretfully loaded up a dolly at Lowes with bags of topsoil and potting soil. Big mistake. Expensive. And I really underestimated how much I would need. Math, how does it work?



So after realizing I was way short on soil, and not wanting to pay a small fortune for even more soil, I started asking around about free dirt. I soon learned about the county landfill selling compost for next to nothing. Off to the landfill.



Thirty dollars, and 2380 lbs later, I was a happy guy. I imagine the leaf springs on my truck were not happy with me. Yes, thats a snow shovel.



Finally done. Now I just need to find a cheap source for mulch and plant some fall crops. Or maybe we will just do a cover crop or two until next spring...




This is an experimental bed. Im planning on at least three more over the next two years. One of these will be in the front yard, and will have to look "nice". But I need to concentrate on this one for now. Any advice on a fall or winter crop?

It looks like there is still a bit of uncomposted wood in that compost. Such is normal, but the wood will continue to suck nitrogen out of the soil as it finishes decomposing. Most of the "mulch" or "compost" sold at the big box stores is worse, it's basically wood chips with a tiny bit of compost thrown in.

Depends on what you are trying to grow.

Are you planning to put in plants or just a covercrop as a placeholder?

TRG

Grow kale as a cover.

If your leaf springs get mad about a 2400 lb pay load then they'd surely have a heart attack at my place. I have a GMC K2500 that I've had 6500 lbs of firewood on before... wasn't even on the overloads yet (close, but not completely).