Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Laura McKenzie" <laurabrownmckenzie@worldnet.att.net>]

Our method of double digging isn't quite the same as Jeavons though his 
books gave me to idea to do it in the first place.  I'll say again, I do not 
double dig if there is any hope of decent soil in the area. I reserve double 
digging for the areas in the yard where the soil is subsoil, rock and chirt.

We excavate about 20 inches or so out of the bed and put that to one side. 
Then we use the shovel (or pick more typically) to turn over and loosen the 
remaining soil at the bottom of the bed and work amendments into.  Then we 
do our hugelkultur mound on this adding leaves and kitchen scraps to the 
pile. Finally we pull the soil heaped to the side back over the mound again 
adding amendments as we work. The amendments include compost, rock 
phosphate, lime and greensand though I'm trying to cut back on the 
greensand. I've decided its not sustainable.

     That hugelkultur page that I posted a couple weeks back has been added 
to. I put a "before" and "after" photo there so the difference is apparent. 
I also put a photo of a bed we did by sheet composting  comparing it to the 
photo of a bed we did hugelkultur in that same year.  Both were treated 
exactly the same after being built.  The difference is apparent in the 
photos. Go 4/5ths down the page to see the comparison photos.

http://home.att.net/~ekyorigins/Hugelkulture.html


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Laura's Homeschooling, Garden, and Genealogy Site
is found here: http://home.att.net/~ekyorigins
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