Six Figs Farm LLC

by Sunday

Back in April, we built a Hugelkultur bed (details of that can be found here)

What is our reason for trying this during a time when we are starting up a small farm/market garden? Primarily, every square inch of space we have is overgrown, depleted pasture land. We believe strongly in no-till methods, and restoring the soil to fertility. We are constantly fighting back the more aggressive grasses and invasive weeds, which will take over an area in a matter of a couple of months if left unchecked. Raised beds are one solution.

We decided to start out our first season Hugelkultur bed growing legumes. They are very light feeders, requiring very little soil fertility, and they fix nitrogen in the soil. We wanted more than a cover crop, so we decided on bush string beans. We planted the top of the 60 foot long bed. Since it was covered with weedguard, we decided not to plant the sides. We used the weedguard to (hopefully) ensure that the grass and weeds didn’t just grow up the sides and take it back over.

The weather did not cooperate. We had an early, droughty summer, with record high temps in May, however, we ended up harvesting approximately 30 pounds of beans. Since this was for our own consumption only, that was plenty.

We were really surprised by how productive this bed was. There were a couple of places where the dirt must have drifted down, and the plants there didn’t do as well. However, overall, they were healthy and productive.

The cons:

The ants moved in right away. Evidently, we built an enormous ant hotel. That made harvesting less pleasant than it could have been. Also, like any paper or plastic mulch, the weedguard increases the soil temperature. So, when the temp hit record highs in the 90’s in early May, the plants suffered more than the ones we had elsewhere mulched with wood chips.

We’ve ended the first growing season by cutting the bush bean plants even with the top of the bed. We’ve left the plants in place to serve as a mulch. We plan to make small cavities, add compost, and plant the pumpkin seedlings we started a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully that will go just as well. We plan to continue using this bed, and will probably add several more in the near future.

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