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)

Planting Season Gamble

Well crap............!!!!!!!

I decided to plant out an early crop of spinach, arugala, kale, peas and beans with the hopes of getting a jump start on the year after a relatively mild winter.

The forecast says otherwise with some nights dipping into the low 20's, thats cold enough to do cellular damage to the just sprouting plants. Well, I better scramble up some protection for them as it looks like its going to be a cold week at the shortest. Hopefully a little plastic cover and the warmth of the raised beds composting will give them what they need to survive!

Mulching the orchard with the wood chipper

Although it is still considered Winter I am getting excited about this Spring's gardening. I plan on taking the orchard to the next level this year and have the next phase of the food forest installed. So far we have our Fruit trees laid out with Plum, Persimmon, and Apricot in the first tier terrace, Italian Prune (Plum) in the second terrace, Cherry in the third, Pear in the fourth and Apple in the fifth.



Each terrace has a row of fragrant herds for scent masking, pollinator attractant and cooking/ medicinal uses. these include Rosemary, Lavendar, Valerian, Borage and Sage.



Another row of flowers for attracting pollinators includes Columbine, Foxglove and Lupine (also a nitrogen fixer)



In between the fruit trees running perpendicular to the herbs and flowers are Goji Berry bushes. these are both extremely nutritious but also provide nitrogen to the soil. Along the edge, also running perpendicular to the herbs and flowers is  a row of ceonothus acting as both a pollinator attractant and a nitrogen fixer.



As the trees will take time to mature this year I will be adding bean and pea trellises to produce vegtables as well as fix nitrogen in the soil. The trellises are being contructed out of Alder that we acquired this year and will be inocculated with mushroom plugs. Like I said, I'm getting excited about what is in effect Year 4 for our Orchard and Garden turned Permaculture. Check out some of the videos on YouTube and Subscribe, we need all the help we can get! Also check out some of the links for products I use around the yard!



Like the new Nikon D5600 I picked up to help up the quality of the YouTube channel and spme of the photographs I put up on the blog!



http://amzn.to/2HeG2ws

Permaculture Adding a Hop Trellis

Had a chance to put in our hop poles for the trellis. It's been a wet year so far so I didn't want to transplant them and have them rot in the ground. It looks like they are happy and getting ready to take off like a hop rocket!! Check out the video and subscribe for more updates. The permaculture project is coming along. We're entering Year 3 so there should be some harvest of the fruit trees, asparagus and more!!!








 

Hugle Lasagne Garten Kultur (Raised Garden Beds)

We finally got around to processing down last years storm debris, landscape compost, bonfire and bbq ashes and charcoal, and our kitchen compost. I added some logs and branches on the bottom to decay and absorb water and nutrients for the summer months. I'm not sure what I want to plant yet but most likely it will be something that loves sun and heat and will provide some shade to the middle beds for those less heat tolerant plants.

I'm calling Winter Over

I set out this past winter to be more active with writing. Nope, I really don't get that many views so I tried to keep up with making videos of past projects and use the dreary winter weather as an excuse to be inside editing all the video I shot while the weather is good. I figure that's when people will be trying to waste some of the dark days hours anyway.

Well, I'm calling it. I'm going to say that spring has sprung. I'm going to go back and recap on some of the projects I was able to accomplish and see if I can get this blog back on track, views or no views damn it. I don't do much writing these days so I have to keep up my typing skills somehow!

I have a good backlog of photographs to go through and I should put them to use. Since launching Spatial Recognition last year most of my time has been directed to getting that off the ground. We are attempting to focus on Historic, Natural and Cultural Resources in an area that is more about demolition and Mondrianesque painted vertical shipping container looking buildings.

So, sticking with the post and a notion to be succinct I'll turn my attention to the excitement in the landscape. The Ivy War continues and there will be another chapter coming soon but it has led to a more ambitious plan of permaculture. We intend to create a Master Plan (which I will outline later) that provides us and the animals some of our daily requirements. One of these initiatives is what I call indicators, indicators are plants that are typically consistent in their cycle. I plant them, or they plant themselves, in areas where I need certain functions. First, color! I need to see something that is not white, grey, or brown. While the evergreens are helpful I want some pink, red, purple, yellow, you know a bright garden billboard that says IT'S SPRING.

Flowering Quince- The humming birds are already VERY happy to see this starting to bloom. Although this is not the giant sweet quince fruit producing variety, we do get small tart quince that are loaded with pectin that go wonderfully with rhubarb and blackberry the the wife makes in to a jam. Keep these trimmed up and it'll flower almost all summer.

Hyacinth!!! One of my favs. What more is there to say? Both of these are perfect wake up calls to get your beans and greens started. They are also extremely important for the first food source for early bees. This is vital in the event the fruit trees blossom early as you want to keep the bees around. A couple of these planted strategically near the fruits and veggies will boost your yield.

The Ivy War

The Great war started like all others before it. After a few initial contacts the differences between the two sides were slowly magnified, like a scientist zooming in with a microscope so close that the resemblances of what was and what is became vastly different. A small grievance that evolved into contempt, pitched battles, proxy wars and ultimately direct open conflict. The slippery slope and the fog of war compounded the decent.

As I looked across the landscape I was annoyed by an incursion into our territory. After scouting and an investigation I had found the enemy had penetrated deep into our area and was establishing a foothold. What I thought was an establishment of agreed upon lines was actually the launching pad for their offensive. Having spotted this just in time I was able to beat back the incursions and reestablish the front lines.

This is how these things start and slowly unravel. I went to battle at first with light weapons and now it has become a series of pitched battles, tactical warfare with strategic purpose. Having taken out my first salvo, I descended into the woods. The Ivy had worked its tendrils into every garden bed and taken over the hill. They had taken the high ground and were choking us out with a patient siege and war of attrition that we could not sustain. I broke the siege by cutting them off at the base.



Jason Kotarski

 

Thus the battle begun. The small hatchet and machete struck the first blows. The ivy fought back, grabbing ahold of my foot and tripping me causing a tumble. I didn't even notice the Ivy had allied with the Blackberries causing a mess to my fingers, hands, arms, and face. I ratcheted it up a notch and invoked fire to burn through the root mass that had strangled the landscape to death. I hacked and piled and torched small circles to the earth and tilled the ashes and tinder to the soil. I was moving the frontlines of the war and in these circles I planted our counter offensive. The ivy had strangled the native species and specimen plants leaving behind a green carpet of landslide danger. The counter offensive was to reinforce our position and entrench the battle lines.

 

Jason Kotarski

 

The enemy had infiltrated our transportation corridor necessary for supply lines and reinforcements. The rocks were to be our foothold and we had to press the advance.

 

Jason Kotarski

 

We spotted the enemy position and plotted our attack. We would wait for a Saturday when the enemy would be vulnerable and waited for the sun to set to mask our movements before we sprung our trap. We had flanked the enemy and were advancing on two fronts in a pincer movement to divert the attention of this infiltrator. They were deeply entrenched in their position and we invoked Sun Zhu as we planned to hold our ground. It was hand to hand combat, grappling and twisting, pulling and wrestling to yank them from the trenches. 

 

Jason Kotarski

  

 The southern flank had succeeded but we knew we would be tested on this side again. By only attacking the exposed positions we left the main forces to regroup later. We need to establish an observation post to monitor the situation.

 

Jason Kotarski

The initial pitched battles are showing signs of stabilization with new habitation in the controlled sectors. These are becoming excellent rear guards to sustain our Forward Operating Bases (FOB).

Oh adversary Ivy and your proxy Blackberry, we will defeat you and on the fourth day of the month of July we will declare our independence and watch you burn in the flames of our success!