Working on a New Kitchen Garden, Mulching, and Raising Some Walls - Weekend Homesteading Report
Well that was a busy weekend full of garden work and I went over to a friends place and help him raise up several walls on his new house. It was a lot of fun and a great example of a neighborhood coming together to help out.
I had never raised walls on a house before so it was a new experience for me. But I think the community side of it that really stood out to me. Perhaps it has just been my own experience but it seems rare these days for people to come together to help build a neighbor their house.
It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I got to help out with it!
Mulching... always mulching...
I'm always spreading mulch on my homestead and it feels like this task never ends. But the benefits that mulching brings are so great that I really don't want to stop.
Mulching helps to retain more soil moisture, build soil, increase the percent organic content in the soil, and provide habitat for beneficial soil critters and fungi. If I mulch well then I don't need to water--so it is a lot of work now but mulching saves me a ton of work in the long run.
And my plants are much happier with a good mulch layer!
In this case I was adding fall leaves on top of wood chips that I had put down last year. These wood chips got kicked down a bit by robins but I also wanted to add the fall leaves to help keep the wood chips moist and encourage more fungal activity.
Fall leaves are really one of my favorite mulching materials and I like to add them on top of areas I already mulched with wood chips.
But in the long run I hope to rely on chop-and-drop and the fall leaves that fall in place for my ongoing mulching. Plus some low growing plants as a living mulch. Basically just mimic what happens in a natural forest!
I still got more bags of fall leaves so I'm sure next weekend I will be doing some mulching!
Working on the Garden
The new kitchen garden is slowly coming together. This is a big project that I'm basically doing by myself. My son is only 2 and my wife is very pregnant so they can't help much right now.
There are only 3 beds but all together it should be around 400 square feet. I hope to measure it all soon.
For each bed I dug down about 2 feet and added wood and then soil and sod. This is what is known as a hugelkultur bed.
But I'm now adding more wood on top of the wood, soil and sod. I also added the first border around the edge of the beds. I will be building each bed up and I expect the final beds to be approximately 3 to 3.5 feet deep counting the buried part.
This will be great for my vegetables and my hope is that I will not need to water this garden once the seeds all germinate. Though it might take a couple years as the wood slowly breaks down for that to happen.
It is a ton of work right now but in the long run it will save me a lot of time and energy.
What About You?
Well now it is time to get back to work. I'm going to go do more garden work today as soon as I post this. Got to add more wood and then start putting the soil back on the beds.
If you are interested in some of the techniques mentioned in this post check out the links at the end of this post.
What about you? Did you work on any homesteading/gardening projects this weekend? Please share--I would love to see what your project!
Thank you!
Weekly Blog Post
- What You Need to Know About Permaculture Zones
- Companion Post on Steemit - Getting Started With Permaculture Zones
Related Blog Posts
- How to Work With Nature to Rewild your Homestead (And Why You Should Do It.)
- Chop-and-Drop: A Quick and Easy Way to Abundance
- Hugelkultur Beds: The Best Raised Beds for Your Garden
- What is Mulching? The Complete Introduction to Mulching
- Mulch Types – What You Need to Know
Follow me for more posts all about homesteading, working with nature, and growing your own food: @wildhomesteading
And check out my blog - www.wildhomesteading.com for weekly in-depth posts on working with nature to grow your own food and start/build your homestead.
Honestly, two year olds are so useless. They really need to learn how to use a spade ;P
Exciting times on teh homestead! Mulching is sooo important. I've got to the stage now where a lot of our gums self mulch, which is cool. WE often nab the power company guys if they're trimming trees away from the lines and mulching, and get them to drop a load of mulch at our place. Hoping they'll do that again soon as we could do with another layer and patch in some sections.
lol, well my little boy does try to help. He will get his little spade and say "Arden working hard" while he is trying to dig.
I'm going to need to get more mulch soon--I have a lot at the moment but it is no where near enough to get rid of all the grass I'm trying to remove... I might have to reach out to the power company here...
Aw, so cute. I love the name Arden! Where does it come from? I have heard it before, but it's not too common here.
Yeah mulch is PRICEY here - to get it delivered, it's about 200 US for a truckload (ten metres)
My wife liked the name (I like it too!) and I think she got it from a baby book. Has a couple different meanings... either ardent/enthusiastic but also "great forest" or bear. We wanted a nature name without being too obvious about it. Arden was a good fit :)
Just a magical name. I thought 'ardent' might have been an origin but love it even more that it's also got a nature origin. It's a strong name too! My son was called Jarrah, for the huge jarrah trees here in Australia.
Nice! I like that name :)
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