SPG - Hugelkultur

Post date: Apr 5, 2015

Stanthorpe Permaculture Group's 14th gathering today was at Justin and Holly's Permaculture Farm about 20km from Stanthorpe. We started the event with a tour around:

Above we passed the chicken tractor system. Then we walked among the many mounded beds on contour displaying a polyculture of edibles:

Small farms are pretty:

After the inspiring walk around, we got right into the hugelkultur part of the event with Justin explaining what it is and why it's so good. It was already drawn out for everyone to visualise the task:

And then we set to work by digging and pulling out the brambles between the years old pile of wood trash:

Jackets soon peeled off and with the brambles piled up, we moved the largest logs into position first as the base of the hugel (mound):

And then the digging began. This was a combination of decomposing, crumbly wood and soil. We tried to leave the more soily part for the top dressing. This covered the layers of piled wood:

We were making an L shape and leaving a flat inner area. The digging seemed to be never-ending with the mound growing and growing! Finally it leveled off and we could cover the mound with a green manure seed mix and some hay:

While it seem to take a long time, this whole task took 2 hours and collectively this equated to 24 person hours! Wow, we all felt a sense of accomplishment and Justin and Holly were smilingly grateful. A well deserved yummy lunch and chat followed. Thanks everyone for coming to help :)