Want to start growing your own food, maybe how to grow enough food to contribute towards your family’s cooking or are starting a new allotment. Filling raised beds of containers can be quite expensive, especially if you are filling a large raised like the one in this video.
Using this method also known as Hugelkulture can save a lot of money, but also establish the bed strongly for future growing success.
Do you like the idea of filling a raised bed like this cheaply and saving yourself money I know I do filling a raised bed like this a big raised bed is going to cost quite a lot of money seriously if you look at the volume of
This I mean I can practically lie down in this raised bed my bath isn’t as big as this raised bed if you were going to fill this entirely with top soil this would cost a lot of money in this video I’m going to show you how you can fill a
Rais bed more cheaply but also it’s not just about saving money it’s actually about promoting soil health and you’re going to get a much better raised bed and quality of growth out of it too guys I’m sorry to interrupt your video but if you could just hit the like button for
Me before I carry on and get back in the ray bed but and it makes a huge difference to a small Channel like us thanks so much in advance so you can see here that I’ve actually cut the anti-weed fabric in the base of this beautiful raised bed I get a lot of
Questions about this I’ve actually overlapped the fabric you can see here that I’ve actually overlapped the fabric just to stop the weeds from coming under and then on the other side it’s going to be a pathway but I’ve actually cut this because even though the soil Health
Isn’t too good here it’s very heavy clay you do want the miracle of nature to do its thing you want the worms to be able to come up through the soil and they’re going to be working on all the material that I’m about to show you so how am I
Going to save you money by filling your Ray’s bed well I’m going to be using a method called hugle culture did I say that right H culture basically involves filling the bottom of the raised bed with organic material so we’re going to start off by putting bigger pieces of
Wood in the base of the rais bed followed by smaller pieces and layering it finally with a layer of cardboard on the top let’s get on with it the beautiful thing about hugle culture is that you’re going to be harvesting the bits of the garden that you’re naturally going to be cutting
Down anyway so I’ve just done a bit of an autumnal tidy up Woody bits like this just in the base of the raised bed and you’ll see that I’m putting the bigger bits of wood at the bottom now while I’m doing this it gives me a chance to explain to you what hugle
Culture actually is hugle culture is process where you put this organic material at the base of the raised bed it all rots down and this is going to be a no dig bed so it’s going to rot down during the season that’s ahead of us and this process of it rotting
Down is going to do a great job in actually feeding the bed that’s actually above it and you’ll notice as well that none of this has cost me any money in fact where we live the local loal Council has actually started charging for green bin waste collections so this
Really is saving you money on multiple fronts and you’ll see here I’m just filling up the rais bed trying to get it as level as possible but this is a really really quick process and so far it’s all quite Woody isn’t it it’s all quite um quite a decent size normally
Put some logs at the bottom as well you can see here that I’m just adding more and more layers of organic material the bigger Woody layers at the bottom and then smaller organic layers at the top and this is literally just leaves branches well rotted grass then I’m
Putting a layer of cardboard on top of that and this is going to be what I’m actually adding the top soil onto you can see there’s still a gap at the top of the rais bed and that’s what we’re going to be planting into during the first
Season this looks so easy when you look at it on time lapse but this took quite a few hours of transferring some top soil for a raised bad just demolished and it looks really really good doesn’t it it’s really starting to take shape and this is how you can fill a rais bed
Relatively cheaply let me know what you think in the comments Below guys
9 Comments
This is just what we need this year! Thank you!
Nicely done. For some of my larger pots I do this with partially decayed oak leaves. They pile up naturally against a wall and I take a shovel or two and put it in the bottom of the pots.
Also even a thin layer is good because then soil doesn’t leak out the bottom.
Brilliant idea
I did the same with stock tanks I planted this year. I was so proud of myself when it cost me under $20 US for the potting soil for each 6 foot x 2 foot x 2 foot stock tank. I planted tomatoes, egg plant, zucchini, & sqush in one, and tomatillos, jalapenos, and poblano peppers in the other. Both tanks produced tons of produce.
Great tips mate!
I love the idea of using what you already have in your yard to fill up most of the raised bed. I do a lot of container growing and will compost in place by adding kitchen scraps and shredded paper in the bottom of the container and soil on top. The plants have really grown well this was. Thanks for the video!
Would love to do this, but I live in west Texas desert. Very few trees, little grass. What grass there is is usually tilled under at any farms for their own use. ☹️
It's good to make sure the cardboard has no tape on it – just plain parts. I added an old wooden log too and made sure I had a nice mix of nitrogen rich (greens) and carbon rich (wood/cardboard/dry leaves) bits and the veggies absolutely loved it ☺
What would be the considerations for the increased heat due to decomposition of the materials and if wood, it takes nitrogen when it rots, so would you add this back to the soil? If so, what would you use and how much? Would love to do this with trees I’ve felled but these two concerns I can’t seem to find answers for. Thank you