GARDEN PLANNING
It's February, but it feels like April, or maybe late March at the worst. The picture below was taken today, as you can see there is no snow, and the soil is pretty much thawed in the first few inches at least. Below that, it is frozen, but I was still able to hack into it with a pickaxe.
Soon to be hugelkultur mound
If you haven't read any of my past postings, I will briefly describe the benefits of hugelkultur. It was invented by a very wise and inventive man name Sepp Holtzer, who is Dutch. It consists of wood mounds covered in dirt, and left to decay. The decaying wood soaks up and retains lots of moisture from rain fall, and when it's planted, the roots have access to that water, as well as nutrients from the decaying wood. A hugelkultur bed that's large enough may not need to be watered at all! This has some very obvious benefits in a dry climate like mine, watering is a pain, and costs me money. If I build a couple of these beds every year, I will eventually have enough of them that my gardening will be a relative breeze. These mounds should be plantable immediately, with the addition of chicken manure to the pile. The only difficulty is getting enough wood to make a decent sized pile!
I will add more photos when I have placed all the wood, I will need to wait for the soil to thaw a bit more before I really get going, since I will need quite a bit of soil to go on top.
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