G'day everyone.
1 Year ago, I had left over Colorbond from when our house was built and decided to make a raised garden bed with that and scrap wood.
One problem I had with a very low budget project, was how the heck do I fill a large bed with that much soil on a low budget?
I couldn't dig it from the yard as we are on an inland island and it's all sand here and I only had a little bit of compost from the previous house.
One night online, I discovered Hugelkultur, which if I understand correctly, is an old German method of building up raised beds with logs, branches and organic matter and growing your produce in the soil above that. Then, as time goes by, the wood and stuff underneath will eventually rot down and become nice organic matter for your garden bed.
I back onto a forest, so I used debris along my fence line, which ranged from very thick branches, down to twigs and leaves.
Apologies for the long read and here are some photos of what I did back then...
It's almost 1 year later now , so next month I will remove the strawberries and broccoli I have in it now and will dig down to above the branches and give it one big turnover. That will be the first time all those upper layers have been mixed, so I'm keen to see what it all looks like after a year of watering, rain and having small crops growing on top.
