Hugelesquely Inspired

First of all, let me just say that Blogger sucks with uploading pictures.  When I uploaded them Blogger rearranged them all.  I don't know html coding so I can't go in to fix it that way.  That forced me to attempt moving pictures around in the "compose" option.  You can move a picture up one at a time, and it's tedious.  But then half way through the process it stopped allowing me to move pictures...so they are out of order.  Which sucks because I was attempting to show the steps I went through in constructing this last hugelesque bed...I say "esque" cause I'm not sure it qualifies as a hugelkulture bed.  The first four pics were meant to be the last four.

Pepper diggin' in one of my unfinished hugel beds

Carolina Blue

For the ladies...me movin' some mulch around.

Bo Beppa (what I call pepper) diggin' still...you can see a chicken feather.  It got there because I harvested the chicken bedding to add as a layer of fertilizer

This is a load of hay that I acquired via  a local business called "Cowboy Connection."  I buy hay from them every once in a while to place in the coop.  Every couple of months they sweep out the hay room and I pic up the hay for free.  I use it for building soil or as bedding.  Also use it for humanure (although right now the humanure operation is on hold for various reasons).  This load was used for constructing the latest hugel bed. 

This is the southwest bed.  You can see a couple forks of hay at the bottom of this pic.  That is actually a hole that I dug last year to collect water.  This bed had peppers that had been overrun by basil.  I pulled the basil before this pic obviously, and it can be seen laying in the center of this bed.

This is about a week worth of scraps from the kitchen (the black is coffee grounds)

Here you can see the contents of that compost bucket dumped on top of hay at the North end of the bed.

I then covered the compost with more hay

Here I added some wood that I acquired at the county landfill while also acquiring free mulch.  When I get mulch I always walk around and grab whatever logs and sticks escaped the mulch machine.  I bring the wood home for hugel bed construction and for fire wood.

Here you can see more compost spread on top of the hay.  This compost came from a compost pile that is pictured further down. 

This is the South end of the South West bed.  I worked in two sections because I had that hole to fill on the other end.  I left one basil plant in the ground, you can see it on the top right of this picture.

To the right you can barely make out the compost because I dumped all of the mulch to the right.  The compost bin was made from rabbit fencing.  I just make a 3 foot diameter circle with the rabbit fencing and it works great.  This is spring and summer compost.  That five gallon bucket was dumped into that bin and then covered with hay or mulch about 15 times.  It composts down to nothing.  All spring and summer and I ended up with one wheel barrow worth of compost. 

Here I made another tribann with landfill wood.  I've also already spread the above compost across the entire bed.

I stood on the roof of my truck to get this pic

see

There are three beds here that make up the invoking and south facing end of the tribann.  They are hard to see due to changes over the year in plant growth.  It's hard to tell also because I have spread mulch around. 

Here you can see three beds a bit better, although the tribann is loosing it distinctness because of the North West bed (the bed shown at the bottom of this pic).  I made what I'm calling a "keyhole hugel bed".  You can see to the right, that there is a small area not covered with as much mulch.  That is the entrance into the key hold hugel bed.  Lot's of microclimates are going to exist in that bed.  You can also see the gypsy house (two car garage) and the chicken coop just to the left of it.

I finished up by adding a foot of mulch on top of the mess.