when are you sowing your garden this year?

[Irving]

Okay, let's try these pictures again since I've made some progress.

This is what our yard used to look like. I've torn out nearly all the foliage as it was just too much to manage. This is the progress I've made so far. I'm trying to finish up the garden this year so I can fill it with dirt on top of all the branches, leaves, consumables, dog crap, etc I have in there. I want to fill it with dirt, stir it up, and let it sit all winter/spring. Then rototill it and put a layer of top soil or something before I plant a garden. I'd really like some tips from you guys, as I've never really tried to garden before. Let's check out the pictures.






**I was quoted $3,000 to remove all the foliage in the backyard and juniper bushes in the front yard. I bought a Ryobi Sawzall for $60 instead. What looks like a line of bushes in front the new fence in the picture above is what was left of a mature grape vine that I had cut down the year before. That's how much it grew back without the scaffold.

Found these grapes near the ground when I tore out the vine, for the second time.





I traced my sprinklers so I could see how much room I had for a raised bed garden. I didn't want to try and level the yard and a garden seemed like a better use of space.


I made a couple different draws of ideas and asked my wife to pick one. She liked the idea of multiple boxes so she could access them easier. We ended up with something in between.






The last photos are from today. I've gotten more of the trim up, but it got too dark to take a photo. I really need to button up the sides so I can start just filling up the whole box with sticks and leaves and junk in a hugelkultur/compost hybrid. I'll get a photo from the roof later so you can see how the gardens connect along the back.
Each of the three boxes is roughly 10'x5'. I'm going to put the chicken coop on top of the left cubby (middle of the last photo). I have some sprinklers that I'm going to pave over in another part of the yard, and had a fantasy of using that circuit to make a garden drip line or something, but that's all way outside my level of experience. As I said in the beginning, I'd like some planting ideas and general tips on how to plant a garden (what to plant and where, etc). This is way larger of a garden than I ever thought I'd have, especially considering the very small size of our yard (1/6th of an acre). I'm a bit concerned that if this garden is successful that we'll have way more stuff than we can use. What do you think?

[GilpinGuy]

That looks awesome. You can grow some serious food in that space. You can't grow too much. Can, dehydrate, ferment, barter and just give extra away.

I'm pretty much a novice gardener myself, so no advice except that you need to save all the chicken crap - compost GOLD.

[Irving]

I got the hugelkultur idea from your thread. While I paid someone ($300) to haul away all those cut down trees, I still had some left over yard waste. I knew I wasn't going to get around to building this very soon (heck I'm still not done) and didn't want it sitting around all year. I'm going to need a lot of fill dirt as well, and the only way to get it back there is with a wheel barrow. The gap between the fences is very high and the neighbor's dog gets in. I've got her mostly blocked off now, and the fill dirt will finish things off, but I can't have her coming into my yard if I'm going to be having chickens.

[Irving]

Bit of a repost from the chicken thread, but the garden is pretty much completed with the exception of the sides. Thinking about sacrificing one box per year as a chicken run, with the idea of rotating the run each year. Thoughts?

[Irving]

Watched this film called Back To Eden tonight. It is about gardening in a way that uses little to no active watering. The reference to Eden is directly related to the Bible, so there is a significant amount of Bible reference. The actual video is somewhat boring and repetitive, but I felt that the method seemed sound and the information very useful. The whole idea is to mimic nature when growing things. I found the website and the full documentary is posted online. Hope this information helps someone.

http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

[Irving]

Got two Focus loads of free deadwood from a neighbor today. I noticed that a big branch had fallen out of their tree during the last round of high winds. I drove by their house every day till I caught someone outside to see if I could clean up the branch for her. She was pretty happy to have someone come get it.

[Irving]

I've gotten another windfall of filler material from my neighbor who wanted some trees removed in his backyard. Pictures are yesterday, then today. I'm ready to fill with dirt, but I really have no idea how to go about it. How much can be fill dirt, how much top soil, etc? I'm really looking for answers relating to depth so I know how much to acquire. I know we're all probably tired of these painfully slow updates, but I'd really like to have a successful garden this year.

Yesterday:



Today: All three boxes are just as full.

[TheGrey]

Are you looking to create mounds, as with most hugelkulture? If so, I would think that getting the amount of soil that you would obtain to fill your planter boxes would be the way to go, because as your branches break down, the soil level will settle.

Before you put your soil in, have you thought about rigging up some sort of irrigation system that will be beneath the soil? Such as a PVC pipe with small holes drilled everywhere, with a connector for a hose outside of the planter box? I would have suggested a soaker hose (because I was intending to do something like that with a soaker hose for OUR surprise hugelkutur mound, thanks to one of our chokecherries giving up the ghost, but I've read that the hoses tend to break down or crack.

I would get on part filler dirt, two parts compost, and one part topsoil. My reasoning is that you're going to soak the daylights out of the wood before you put any dirt on top. I'd 'lasagne' compost and filler dirt, then dump in the topsoil. When it starts to get warmer, I'd add lots of worms (have you thought of starting a worm colony?) and some organic fertilizer that won't burn the worms, while starting seedlings inside.

That's what I plan on doing, but we don't have nifty planter boxes. I do, however, have five full-sized hay bales. I'm going to hay-bale garden, surrounding a small hugelkultur hill. Once the snow finally disappears from our backyard, I'll take photos and we can compare notes to see what's working!

One more thing- have you put something inside of your planters to keep the soil from oozing out of the bottom? I've seen that happen when there are heavy rains.

[Irving]

I haven't thought about a soaker hose, I just assumed I'd water with a regular hose every day after work, or some kind of mister set-up that you see in flower beds.
As far as soil settling, I imagine if have to refill to bring up the level year.

I wasn't going to make mounds, just fill the boxes until they are nearly flush with the top rail. Looking forward to seeing what everyone else does this year.

[Irving]

Now that I'm not falling asleep when responding I have a few more things.
How are you going to use the hay bales? Is it hay or straw?
I think I might need to add a board across the bottom, and then two vertical boards across the front of each box before any dirt goes in, as the weight of the branches is already pushing out the metal. I chose to lay the corrugated horizontally, and I still think that was the better way to go, but I can't be sure.
I thought of worms yesterday and plan to do that as well. Once all the wood is soaked and dirt has been added, I plan on soaking the dirt and covering the entire area with straw. Straw bales are pretty cheap at only $8 each. That white plastic bag under the chicken coop is actually one of those grain bags I got from HBARleatherneck. It is holding the remaining straw bale I bought for the chicken. Keeping it under there keeps it dry, and insulates the coop from below at the same time.

EDIT: What is everyone's feeling about tossing dog poop into the compost area? *Not the compost I'd use in a chicken run.