Building Up the Home Garden

Mein Siegesgarten

I’ve been working on this everyday for two weeks. After preparing for the outbreak in the US before it hit, back in January when I was stocking up on ready to eat meals, now it’s time to switch gears and move to supplement. Growing a victory garden is a duty all of us have.

As pictured here from today, you can see the latest mound addition, with black gold manure, compost, Peat Moss, grass, and ground soil from the spot I dug up. This one was a real ass kicker. I spent 12 hours laying down logs:

The logs and branches provide drainage and helps prevent root rot.

Then I laid down cardboard and newspapers for the worms:

After that, I began mixing peat moss with grass clippings:

Then I applied it as the first layer of soil:

I worked the peat moss/grass clippings with soil from the yard.

So began the arduous, ass kicking process of picking apart the damp clay soil by hand and working the peat moss/grass into it.

Slowly, over a few hours, it came along. I had to make sure the soil would be easy for the carrots, turnips, and beets could work through it.

Once the pile dwindled down, I began to layer it with straight peat moss. This will help with water retention during the hot summer days.

That pile was a real ass kicker. Also, the neighbors yelling and fighting with each other for the whole 12 hours didn’t help. This physical challenge became more of a mental trial. No gain without pain!

It was also perfect weather, too. Church bells rang every hour and the birds were plenty.

I topped the mound off with a thick layer of manure and peat moss mixture.

The manure and humus before mixing.

Before the seed planting and final soak down.

It’s been a busy, ass kicking couple of weeks!

Tools of the trade

Adds nutrients to the soil, as peat moss has very little nutrient value for plants. Adding grass clippings and or hay helps, too.

Sometimes I’ll mix my spent coffee grounds into my soil mixture, but this time I chose to wait till after the mound was finished. This morning I went out and dumped about two containers worth of grounds on top, dispersed relatively evenly. Followed that up with a healthy dose of ground up egg shells to provide the plants with calcium and magnesium.

So, that’s the latest addition in my Hugelkultur garden. Go out and start your own garden and have a little bit more security in these uncertain times!

Follow my blog and look for more. I’ll write a couple posts on step by step how I built the first two mounds and how I learned this method of Hugelkultur.