Experimenting with Sepp Holzen’s Hugelkultur Raised Bed and Swale

In March 2013, I took the 72 hour Permaculture Design Certification class offered through the Sustainability Institute at George Mason University, in Fairfax Virginia.  The course was taught by Wayne Weiseman and it was an exceptional experience, an outstanding experienced instructor, and a fabulous group of people.

Immediately after the course was over, I wanted to experiment with some of the practices I had learned and decided to create a vegetable raised bed in my garden following the hugelkultur method, which has been created and practised for over 4o years by Seff Holzen, in Austria.

Adopting this method, one creates a swale (ditch) en contour, following the natural slope of the land and a berm next to the swale which has logs at the bottom and is covered with manure and soil. This becomes the raised bed into which one plants the vegetables.

I went about this on my own, and was very curious to see whether my hugelkultur raised bed would work as I had wished.

One month has gone by and I can now share the photos of the hugelkultur bed and the vegetables I planted in it one month ago and which have grown in an exceptional manner.

Following are some pictures I took while I was constructing the raised bed :

Placing the logs along the swale edge

Covering  logs with manure and soil  and compacting well with my hands as to avoid a landslide

I covered the raised bed with mulch

One month later……………….. fantastic vegetables

One spinach plant in my hugelkultur raised bed on April 25, 2013

April 25, 2013, below is a spinach plant I planted in the same original size as the one above, but into regular flat soil.

Of course, as the swale along the raised bed  collects the rain water, it can be rather muddy after a nice rain.

Our friend’s wonderful golden retriever,   Cameron,  was playing in the garden one day and  I got distracted and forgot the swale was muddy!!!!!!!!!!

Cameron has just found another use for the swale…………………………….