Hügelkultur Raised Beds

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fuzzi said:
I have 14" beds, and all the wood at the bottom has decomposed. They don't grow 14", I harvest at about 6". The tops I give to my flock, they LOVE them!
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Thanks. I might have some of those small carrots in my seed collection. Might be a good year to try some in one of my hügelkultur raised beds. Probably one of the older ones with more topsoil in the bed due to the hügelkultur wood decomposing.

I feed the chickens lots of stuff from the garden. But I'm going to check into if the carrot tops are edible for people. As much as I like my chickens, it's people first in my house! Not to worry, my chickens eat like royalty anyways.
 
akroberts1085 said:
I have to put carrots in a bed because the ground has an excessive amount of rocks in it.
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I have poor native topsoil, too. That why I initially moved to gardening in raised beds.

:old I spent years trying to improve my native soil but realized that time was not on my side. Better to spend a little money up front, get some good topsoil and compost for the raised beds, and actually grow food now. As I grow older, time is more precious to me...

I have lots of chicken run compost, so I only had to buy some quality topsoil for the beds. I mix the topsoil and chicken run compost 1:1 for filling the beds on top of the wood. Using the hügelkultur method saved a lot of money in filling the raised beds, plus the wood acts like a giant water battery to feed the plants.

It was a win-win for me and I now get results far in excess of whatever I got with in-ground planting in my poor, sandy, native soil.
 
gtaus said:
Thanks. I might have some of those small carrots in my seed collection. Might be a good year to try some in one of my hügelkultur raised beds. Probably one of the older ones with more topsoil in the bed due to the hügelkultur wood decomposing.

I feed the chickens lots of stuff from the garden. But I'm going to check into if the carrot tops are edible for people. As much as I like my chickens, it's people first in my house! Not to worry, my chickens eat like royalty anyways.
Click to expand...
The greens from carrots are edible and they taste delicious. I'm going to be dehydrating some for winter. Fresh is preferred but if I can dehydrate them then so be it.
 
I have a big gas tiller. I use it in the spring.... sometimes. I used it to break the ground for my heavy soil garden. No way I could turn that by hand, and I don't think a battery powered tiller would have the muscle. Most of the time, the tiller sits in the shed.

I named it "The Hun" because I like puns.
 
Oh. I was going to say that I did hugelkultur, sort of, in the flat areas of my sandy soil garden. I dug trenches and buried logs and sticks, then leaves. No real hugel (which means "hill"), but the idea of logs being a water reservoir and decomposing under the plants still applies.

If you try this, MARK WHERE the trenches are! I was using the area for potatoes and sweet potatoes. My row of potatoes wandered a bit, and I dug up some leaves and sticks.
:oops:
They were breaking down though, so I did prove the concept!
 
Sally PB said:
I have a big gas tiller. I use it in the spring.... sometimes. I used it to break the ground for my heavy soil garden. No way I could turn that by hand, and I don't think a battery powered tiller would have the muscle. Most of the time, the tiller sits in the shed.

I named it "The Hun" because I like puns.
Click to expand...
Took me a few seconds to "get" it :gig
 

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