An acquaintance from the Sustainable Neighbors meetup group stopped by to give me a hand. I've been itching to prune some of the branches hanging over from the back neighbor's yard, but it was too dangerous to do by myself. With help, we were able to get all of the branches that I had been eyeballing.
Next up is the hugelkulture bed. Hugelkulture is a German term meaning 'mound culture' or 'hill culture.' It's really an ancient form of raised bed gardening in which logs and slash, chopped up branches, are not necessarily buried but, rather, covered over with a thick layer of dirt and compost with plants grown on top. There are several advantages to this method. For one, as the logs rot, they provide nutrients to the plants, soil, and microbial life that feed off of it. In conjunction, the rotting wood gives off heat, slightly warming the bed, which, by the way, is what nature does ALL of the time. Leaves fall every season. The new leaf layer decomposes, which gives off heat and plays host to in an incalculable amount of life. Finally, the buried logs, as they rot, tend to absorb and hold moisture. A properly covered hugel bed should not need to be watered, more so if it is built on contour on a slope. As water flows down the slope, the hugel will slow it down long enough for the water to sink infiltrate into the soil and, then, the logs.
Slash that I will be stuffing into the creases and burying with the logs.
The almost complete burial. I'm going to need more dirt. I made the bed into a wave so that it mimicked the urbanite wall and provided a slight micro-climate. It's also more visually interesting.
I decided that since these two logs had mushrooms on them to put them over by the pear tree, kind of to give a home to the insects and let nature take its course with them.
Scored some grass clippings for the compost pile. FYI, Ladies, shopping for me is VERY easy.
As I dug around the logs, I kept finding lilies growing everywhere. This is going to be their 'temporary' bed...ahem. We'll see. Anyway, as I had originally dug up the yard and moved mass around, the bulbs got mixed in the shuffle. I'm just surprised how many bulbs escaped my notice as I was digging.
Suburban Hermit of Fayetteville, signing off.
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