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More context on these raised beds…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eokCNIi3vss – Initial Build video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrsaLgmZJe8 – First spring update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUgQK62fkY0 – Planting raised beds
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Happy growing!
38 Comments
A big mistake many make withe Hugel beds is they sink the box below the suface. This is paticularly true with metal beds. Water cannot then easily flow beneath the beds & be absorbed by the rotting logs. Also failure to use rotting/decomposing is a mistake. Cut fire wood or non-decomposing dead fall will not absorb water for years. Your hugel bed will be as dry as a bone. I dig out about 12 in down in the intended foot print of the bed before placing rotten wood. I reserve the dug out dirt for the top 12 + in under the mulch/compost layer. Hard to feed soil life if there's no actual soil in a hugel bed.
I like your mom. The ideas of putting the flowers in the middle of the beds & woven trellising for the tomatoes are great ones, it'll be so beautiful.
Say hi to your mom from all of us.
Regarding the woven "fence" section, please let me recommend you research hurdle making. No screws needed 😉 Several very helpful tutorials on youtube
A weave for tomatoes is definitely on my to do list for next year. I tried individual stakes for each tomato this year. Not a good idea if the tomatoes aren't pruned to a single stalk, which I don't like to do. So the tomatoes stalks slid down to the ground because they weren't attached tightly to the stake.
But I did have one volunteer yellow pear that I just let grow over the mulch and it's still doing really well, sprawling all over the place. That could be an option for some of the "cherry" types. Takes up a bit more space but also doesn't take any additional effort. Hope your mom enjoyed her new vegetable "patch".
Lots of good news–Happy Harvesting from Kansas–such a hot dry summer here, so looking forward to another opportunity to garden next year. Thank you for posting all your ups and downs-and ever onward!!!
Great job
Love it! Chenopodium has been wonderful this year. Have a nice big (for me) stand in the front yard I've been eating on. Delicious! Hugels are a great way to use or hide punky chunky parts that are difficult to split with a maul, such as gnarly knotty knuckles or piles of rotting/decaying wood and bark not suitable for firewood. The red salvia is magnificent! Lovely to see your mama. Blessings.
VERY interested in seeing this weaved tomato trellis. Tried a Florida Weave this year and lived it, but the use of synthetic twine is a big downside for me
Same here. We build some hugel beds in clay. Dug about a foot into the clay, sifted out all the rocks and roots, built 12" tall boxes around the holes, burried pine in the sifted clay, and topped off with home-made compost.
Didn't put up trelesses or plan for managing much because I honestly wasn't expecting much this year – just trying to improve the soil. Well, our beds turned into a jungle, even got quite a bit of stuff that we didn't plant growing from the compost. We let the chickens have run of it and they loved it.
This winter we will put up some trelesses, and a fence to keep the chickens at bay next year.
Had a garden full of big-box-store garden soil from last year and it didn't even come close in terms of size or production. Hugel FTW!!!
They look great and it's hard to beat free.
Hi Sean's Mom! 😄
Nice to see your Mom. Those Hügelbeds are really good. I experimented with them in my Moms garden and the neighbors where so surprised about the harvest that we had 🍅🍅🍅🌶🌶🌶🌽🥒🍓🍓🍓🥗
Thank you for all you share , really enjoy and learn from you. Always such great information to be learned . Thanks for sharing your mom with us , she's awesome , so thankful for our mom's ! We're out here in Colorado Springs , and very thankful for the rain God sent us this year . Thank y'all again !
Wonderful to see your mom. 🙂 Gotta say I like 'em rough 'n ready when it comes to raised beds.
We were gifted some 250 tomato plants quite unexpectedly and a little late. At least we're expecting fine weather till October in a zone 4a dotted with micro-climates. This is thee last summer I ever grow tomatoes without trellising. There starting to ripen, and I think they want to eventually stampede. I counted 21 on the first plant in the first big row and stopped right there and did some fast math. 🙂
Yor Mom’s garden beds are very productive. I am glad you made an update. I am growing Cherokee Tan pumpkins successfully after a failed attempt last year. They have happily taken over most of my garden and have escaped into the yard now. Once they were established they started putting on so many pumpkins on the runners. They are coexisting with the sweet potato bed. They grew over that bed but didn’t affect the plants. I may plant them in the same bed next year as an experiment.
You’ve given great detail about veggies, and i’ll ror sure look into korean celery, as i love’both celery and parsley in everything !
But what is that red flower !? It’s so showy and beautiful !
I walk on my hugemound beds. Was a bit of a miscalculqtion in my drynweather to have elevated soil, let alone elevated soil over air pockets !
Your garden is so lush and green! You have created such a beautiful, welcoming space. I love the border of larger trees and shrubs around the edges with the lawn. I have just ripped out my metal raised beds as they were drying out too quickly and I too will be using timber edging with lots of leaf litter and manure. I can't wait until my trees get taller so I can create a space like this! Thank you for the inspiration, loved it. Alex 🌱
I've been experimenting with what I call 'Hugel Hills' where I simply dig a hole in the ground and then dump free/cheap organic material into it until it raises up into a little hill, have had moderate success growing winter squash on these so far, this is probably what the Indians did.
If you don't plan to maintain it much, maybe more determinate tomatoes would be better? Those tomato rings, I've never seen anyone being happy about using them on tomatoes. They do seem to work great on peppers though.
Looks great. Glad your mom can keep gardening.
Awesome 1st year. Woven trellis would be beautiful. 😊
Love it!!
We've come to love having eyes 😂
This is for the algorithmen. Like and comment.
Good reminder about brush/hugel mounds and wasps. Thanks. I've had the same experience but had forgotten and was about to make the same mistake. I've no problems with wasps. They have their role in the environment. (And after all they are the ancestors of honeybees.) I've always managed to live comfortably side by side with them (we have huge numbers of them in the summer) but no point in making life uneasy for both of us.
Juan is looking slim and trim! I don’t know what he’s doing, but I need to take a page from his book.
U might have answered this as I just watched the video and didn't read the other comments. You started to mention Skunks where you going to say something like skunks like ground dwelling bees and if you place a chicken egg in the entry to thr ground the skunk will be attached to the egg but then actually be more attached to thr Insects ?
Great video! Thanks for the garden that loves to be free!
First year hugel beds watered once and left to nature.?…A huge success I’d say!
I allowed my 3rd year of volunteer tomato plants (selectively) to do their thing next to my raspberry plants. The tomatoes matured later in the season compared to having started them indoors, but by the time the tomatoes took off in growth, the raspberries were long done so I arched some ladder mesh over the raspberry plants so that the tomatoes could crawl their way as they grow. It worked beautifully!
Thanks for introducing Korean celery, I have to investigate that! Any chance you planted the Korean perilla seeds that were sent a few years ago?
So wonderful!!!!!🎉🎉🎉🎉
You are going to be the best father
And Sasha will be the best mother
And Juan will be the best uncle!
I really enjoyed this video! So nice to see IN SUCH DETAIL the abundance