Huglekultur Now

On March 26th, with the help of high school students from Martinez, we began building the first Huglekultur bed at CACG.
You will find some wonderful information on Huglekultur at Paul Weaton's site http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/ This site explains the purpose and principals behind the technique much better than I could. Here are some photos to illustrate our interpretation and progress into the project at CACG.

We started off with lunch

This is the site with a pile of brushwood sitting there

Most of the woody material to be incorporated into the Huglekultur bed was generated at the garden over the past year. There is bark from garden bed tree rounds, Sunflower stalks, old stakes, Mulberry trimmings and the prunings from the Black Locus trees that surround the garden on the East and South sides.

Woody material moved to the side before digging began

Now we dig a large hole down to the sandstone

That's me, David, with the unusual hat

Pastor Terry Murtha (center) helped us dig

Digger Daniel marks the perimeter

 

We ended the excavation after about 80 minutes to allow for another class in the schedule.
We must be half way complete with the digging. The goal is to stop at the sandstone layer. This layer is at about 4 inches near the parking lot end of the garden. Here in the middle it appears to be around 12 to 16 inches.
Hopefully there will be a second bout on this project and we hope that the students can return next month to complete the excavation and begin filling with soil and wood.
Regardless we are very grateful for their enthusiasm and energy in moving this project forward. Well done. Hope to see you again.

Happy Spring,

David