Dirt is worth it's weight in gold

What a wonderful surprise I had this afternoon; I had rung my mother to check on the possibility of getting a loan of the tractor to dig up some dirt for covering all that wood for my Hugelkultur beds only to find out that the tractor is broken down. About an hour after that I was out digging a big hole for the new drop toilet (and harvesting the soil for my new beds) when my mum drives up with a ute full of soil. Blessings Mum.

My reading today raised one issue I hadn't thought of; nitrogen. When carbon breaks down it uses nitrogen in large quantities and wood is mostly carbon. So I thought I would add a heap of blood and bone (high nitrogen) to the bed to try to mitigate the nitrogen drain of the wood breaking down. My first crop will be bush beans, snow peas and maybe an early tomato or two; the bush beans ans snow peas are legumes (draw nitrogen into the soil via bacteria) and the tomatoes don't need lots of nitrogen.

 You can see the pile in all its glory here.

Anyway I have spent a productive afternoon carrying soil in to the bed and only need another trailer full to finish stage one of the bed. The next step is to cover the lot with straw from the sheep shelter and a heap of blood and bone for nitrogen content then I can plant it.

Some background

I thought it was about time I introduced the Humpy. We moved to our bush block in 2008 and built a shed after living in a tiny caravan for three months with two teenage girls (incentives to build galore). Unfortunately my partner discovered that three walls will hold up a roof and deemed that to be shelter enough.
Since then we have successfully built a lot of ramshackle animal housing and got a few creature comforts for ourselves too.
Have a browse through the early days of the Humpy.

Hugelkultur fever

A few months ago a friend of mine shared an idea she had about hugelkultur, which is basically burying wood in soil and planting into it. At the time I filed it away for later research, then today I got to researching.

Have a look at these links;
The basics
In Australia

After all that reading I went out and collected my first 5 wheel barrow loads of old wood to make garden beds in my vegetable/ chook runs.

As you can see, the sheep thought it was a great idea, and even my dog Bandit thought it might work once  I had laid the scrap wood out in the rough shape of beds.

Tomorrows job is to find soil to cover the wood. See you then.

Introduction

It has been recently bought to my attention that I have very few connections to the world outside of work and family.......my world has become very small. This is mostly because of a lack of time (and inclination to be honest). In an attempt to address this  issue I have decided to keep a blog to document my progress in building a sustainable life for myself and my family.
So...a little about the mad house I live in.
I am a 46 year old woman with two daughters and a male partner. We all live in an unlined shed made from poles and corrugated iron (ah la Indian slums). We started out with no running water and no phone but we now have a cold water tap over both the bath and the sink, although hot water is still from the boiler on the wood heater. We have solar power and a nextG phone and internet service.

I work as a garden co-coordinator for the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Project at a local school, the vegetable gardens we grow there are amazing, partly because of the budget thaat allows me to by inputs when I have to but mostly because of the enthusiasm of the students and volunteers. Which brings me to the subject of my following posts.

Over the next however many posts I will document the building and planting of my vegetable garden at home and the building of any improvements to the humpy I can manage. There will also be a fair amount of bitching about my partner, who tends to bear the brunt of my inevitable frustration, I advise you to take it with a grain of salt.