With the help of Aiden and Amber, we added a lot of cantaloupe and watermelon in the huglekulture bed, along with a lot of cowpeas and beans. We also planted a few okra and cucumber in the front raised beds. Several of my tomato and pepper plants were injured/killed in the late April freeze we had last week.
I created a swale (AKA ditch-on-contour) to catch the runoff water that flows behind and around our house. I transplanted the 11 fig trees I started from cuttings last year on the high side of the swale. The idea is to slow down the water and let it soak into the soil. After a big rain, this area might look like a pond for several days. All that water eventually moves down into the soil where plants can use it for weeks or months after, reducing the need to use extra water.
I have one 4×4 raised bed that is mostly filled with strawberries. It hasn’t produced much until now, and wow, it has taken off! Awesome flavor!
For the past few months, I’ve only added food to the left-most side of the worm bin in hopes of convincing all the worms to go over and stay on the left side and let me use the castings on the right. I was trying to avoid the time-consuming task of filtering out the worms when I want to use the castings. The plan kinda worked, but there are still lots of worms left on the right side, even though they haven’t had any added food. What I thought was just worm castings has sunk down a good 3 inches, which tells me the worms are still working on it.
Other observations: I had a lot of worms crawl out of the bin this year. I think this was because I overfed them at one point and created a hostile environment. You can see lots of dead worms on the ground.
This bin has worked out very nicely. The worms are safe from critters and haven’t seemed to have any problem surviving the blistering summer heat or the super cold winter.
I’m several weeks behind and didn’t even have time to plant the onions I bought, but today I did manage to get the raised beds cleared out and a few things planted. I used my tiny chainsaw on the monster okra plants, which worked great.
I’m trying once again to direct-seed cool weather plants in the heat of summer. The ‘feels like’ temperature was 105°F today because of the high humidity due to the 2.8″ of rain this morning. Nice to have the rain though! I was unsuccessful in direct-seeding plants like this last year.
Earlier this weekend before it had rained, I was able to move a lot of top soil out of the “pond” area and place it on the eastern part of the Hügelkultur bed #1. Just before dark I added straw mulch and planted about 50 bean plants, then distributed a packet of buckwheat cover crop to a lot of the bed. The plants I’ve had growing in this bed haven’t done very well. I think it is a combination of not enough soil, the typical first-year poor performance of a hugelkultur bed, and not enough water. I added more soil to this part of the bed compared to the part I already have plants growing in– hope that helps. I’m eager to have plants growing in it to hold the steeply-sloped soil in place. I figure beans are a good choice.
The okra planted in my raised beds are doing great and producing a lot of fruit. The okra in my new huglekulture bed are not doing so great.
