Raised Garden Beds- How to Make a Hugle Culture Lasagne Masterpiece!

In a post I made last year I added a video from my YouTube Channel Jason Michael Kotarski on a method to create a raised bed that would age in place, continuing to provide the garden with broken down organic matter. HugleCulture is the method of mounding wood debris including logs and branches, covering with more organic material and planting on top of it. Boiled down this is the farmhand style of cleaning up alot of storm debris, stacking in a pile and watching turn into dirt for later use. This is perfect if you have a lot of space but if you're confined and want to keep things tidy a raised garden bed is the perfect way to build up your soil in a natural way.

The previous raised beds have worked wonders already and as this is the fourth year for these beds we've had a full rotation of crops. Ideally I think I would've liked to do units of five instead of four. For instance, each area in our master plan is designed as a unit, scalable up or down in size, but repeatable by duplication. The four beds are typically, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Beans/Peas, and Tomatoes, each moving to the next bed the next year in a clockwise direction and they all over winter as salad greens. I think the fifth would have been a good way to add one fallow box to add to during cleanups, instead we're building a seperate space out the will be insulated with a glass top to increase temperature to kill off weeds and seeds.

Regular trimming, pruning and cleanup debris

Here's' a a quick photographic journey of the raised bed method. In these instances I combined both rotten logs with new logs to jump start the mycelium. Mycelium breaks down the material providing nutrients and minerals to the soil, it also creates a symbiotic relationship with the roots of the plants.

Big logs on the bottom, branches on top. These will help hold water like a natural sponge in the soil

On these raised beds, I used $3 cedar fence pickets. they're six foot so if I buy six boards I can build a 6' x 3' raised bed for $20. Notice I place my stakes on the inside of the boxes, feel free to do as you please as they are technically stronger on the outside but I like to be able to line trim quick and easy around these things. All the water entices grass to grow and grass growing intices slug growing! 

Yup, skip the bagging, these wonderful maple leafs are going to break down just nice! By adding a leaf layer, the leaves will be pushed down into the branch crevices and help keep our soil from washing to the bottom to quickly.

A good wheel barrow heaping should do the trick

Next comes the mulch layer, you can skip it if you only have leaves but the leaves break down very fast. The mulch acts as a bit of weight, and insulation blanket to keep the bed warm, and another sponge layer.

mmmmm......a Summer's worth of compost!!!!!

 This is the part I love! Mabe because its the dirtiest! The worm bin compost is added. Typically by this time of year there is a healthy mix of compost and worms working to break everything down. There is still moe work to be done so we add a layer of coffee grounds over the compost to reduce any smell ( it's not a foul smell, we just don't want the critters digging it up) and heap another layer of mulch on that.

ahhh......all year I keep these little things fed and wen it comes time to plant the soil is a beautiful rich black earth with plenty of aeration. The compost layer will be almost completely gone within two weeks of spreading. The worms will multiply and work it into the bed with ease. The warmth of the beds and the cracks and crevices of the branches allows the worms in the ground to work their way up. The wood chips will be decomposed after the next winter cycle at which time we will add store bought compost as a topping to bring the beds back up. They'll be half of the bed by the end of the Fall and the following year we add the commercial compost that we plant directly into and cover with mulch again after the sprouts are established.

Well that photo looks like shit

I'll leave this video at the bottom for the squeamish! Me personally? That's an amazing thing dans la jardin. Make sure you check out the YouTube page and follow what we're doing, we hope to spin off to ventures from what we've been working on. I'm working on WellHaus Winery and we have the Farming Prospectus (working title)