Raised/Sunken Beds - My Spin on Hügelkultur -

I have been renting a small space about 9 miles NNE of downtown Nashville, TN for about 8 years now. The couple that owns the house have become two of my closest friends. I have always tried to have a small garden here and bringing in fresh veggies for everyone to enjoy has always been appreciated. There is approximately 7 acres of land and apart from some wild blackberry bushes the land is pretty much unused. The owner and I have talked about doing some market gardening and such in the past but with the demands of my current business it was (and kinda still is) a little too much for me to take on.

However I have been watching some market gardening techniques lately and it has inspired me to rethink things. Honestly I do not want to be a roadside vendor or market gardener and will likely try to sell to small restaurants but that is something I will figure out at a later date. Right now I need to prove to myself that I can grow vegetables, especially tomatoes, year round. We're calling that step one and over the next few weeks/months I want to share what I am doing and we'll see if I can pull it off.

I have budgeted $3000 for our first heated greenhouse and so far the numbers are looking great. I want to show you some of my technique and if anyone out there has seen something like this please let me know. In essence it is Hügelkultur but not what I have typically seen online.

The first step was to hook up the plow and push all of the topsoil off the area where the beds would be going.

I then laid out where the beds would be located and dug down and piled up the clay around the boarders and walkways. I was not extremely diligent on taking photos of the first two beds so picking up here in the middle row.

You can see I am down into the clay about 4 inches which overall has me down around 8 inches from the original topsoil height.

Then I added about 4 inches of wood chips and on top of that a thick layer of some finer stump grindings which brings me back up the the original topsoil line.

One of the things you will hear people say is not to use wood chips is because they will rob the nitrogen in the soil. Well yes and no, they don't actually rob the nitrogen they simply borrow it for a while. This is what I am doing in hopes to accommodate the amount of soon to be anaerobic composting taking place. I have added a generous amount of organic fertilizer on top of the layer of wood chips. After it is all complete I will have put 72lbs of fertilizer directly on top of the wood chip layers. One day I will write about the 100' pile of wood chips that I am accumulating in another area of the yard.

Then on top of this I am adding some alfalfa hay which will add to the nitrogen content to a degree.

And then I finally got a photo of the biggest cottontail I have ever seen in my life. Honestly it is about as big as a jackrabbit!

Rain has shut down my crude little sifting operation but here is a photo from an earlier bed that I did where I put the sifted topsoil from the area back onto the top of the wood chips and hay. This is somewhere between 6-8 inches thick and will be topped yet again with more topsoil that we are moving from another area of the yard.

I will be sifting this out next week and planting an overcrop of white clover to harvest for composting. It is the best topsoil on the property and a sewer line was put through here about 4 years ago so I would never be able to build on top of it so may as well use it. It goes down 8-10 inches and is about as good as it gets in my opinion. Very likely there was some type of farming operation in this area in the past.

Except for sifting the topsoil from the lower area and mixing in some amendments I should have my beds completed by tomorrow evening. I go pick up the metal top rail on Monday morning and will try to get as much of the greenhouse completed before I have to go back to work next Thursday.

Can't say I've ever started tomatoes in July before. Actually the one area I have always struggled in is starting seeds for transplant. I've got what seems a great spot behind the shed that gets full shade in the afternoon but anyone that wants to send out a good vibe on these would be great. Before I have always started seeds indoors so hopefully this outdoor setup will increase my success a bit. By greenhouse gardening numbers I should be able to get at least 150 tomato plants in the 3 middle beds. I will also have 2 beds 44 inches wide by 32 feet long for lettuce, greens, cucumbers and an eggplant or two.

I am having fun with this and the coming winter is just a trial run on my technique. I have a 5 year plan for this new business which is going to require that I remain in my current profession for the first 2 years so there's not going to be too much time for beer...but I'll do my best to get a batch in every once in a while.

Everything I need is right outside my back door. This land is already zoned for agriculture and my partner has some equipment and full trust in me to make this happen. His desire is so that his beautiful wife, who I am now calling lettuce girl, can ease out of her current job and have some peace in her life. I have been calling him tractor boy just to be fair and the two of them bring so much to the table. I didn't fall out into a pile of cow manure like my father practically did when he was born but I spent a lot of my time on a farm when I was a kid and a lot of years growing things in my backyard. (sometimes even growing those wonderful flowering annuals that require that really inconspicuous location, ha ha)

I do have a permaculture state of mind and a desire to encourage and teach people how to grow food. If I could measure this business as a success in 5 years it will be because I am able to take what I am doing and share it with other market growers and backyard gardeners. I will go more into the depths of what I am creating here overall in the next few weeks so please follow along if you'd like.

More rain is coming in so my evening operation is officially shut down. I guess the biggest decision I have to make now is do I start with a glass of my home-made apple cherry cider or wild harvested passion fruit mead.

life is really tough over here-

Go out and be Nice to someone!

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What the heck?!