Building Hugelkultur Raised Beds

August 25, 2025 Sarah

Hugelkultur Raised Beds: it’s the fancy German word that plays into permaculture. When Kirk and I took a class on permaculture last year, I planned to incorporate the practice into rebuilding parts of our homestead gardens. Then I hurt my arm and sat out the summer. Then…we moved.

As spring turned into summer, and I started building my raised bed garden, adding many more raised beds, I knew I needed to think it over more deeply. Soil isn’t cheap.

For example. I finally found great bed soil locally, from a Mennonite Nursery across the river, in Maryland.

The soil is $4.99 a bag – it;s heavy in weight, and I would guess is a cubic foot bag each. Price wise that is good compared to the “garden soils” sold at big box stores.

It is a blend of screened topsoil, leaf matter, and mushroom compost. It smells good, not how often “garden soil” smells (usually heavy in animal matter).

It’s on the right, next to the other garden soil. It is a fine soil.

I filled the first two raised beds with bagged soil so I could build a herb bed and one for strawberries. For the third bed, I needed to do it quickly, so I added a thick layer of chipped wood and dried leaves. Then piled in the soil.

The clumps are mushroom compost. The bed was done, but I definitely had to spend far too much to get it ready. An 8 ft by 4 ft by 1 ft bed will take over one cubic yard of soil. This soil by the yard is $58. It’s worth it, though.

It will become the raspberry bed next year on both sides. For the fall, I transplanted a dual-crop red variety that I had been growing. They don’t require caning. Next spring I will add more red and also golden dual crop.

For now, I planted a couple of rows of Patio Pride Peas, which are bush, so they will grow fast. I will transplant my lettuce starts in a week or two.

With so many beds to prepare for next year and so many trees to trim, I put that to work. Save money and have healthy soil.

We trimmed all the branches we cut down (the trees here hadn’t been pruned in many years, and some were in terrible shape). It’s work we can do in the shade and isn’t physically taxing, just tiring from using loppers constantly. We used our chipper to process many branches, but the minor items that the chipper doesn’t like often get jammed.

Haul them to the beds and spread out.

I am filling the beds to the top with the cut branches and leaves. Then I will place the trimmed logs on top to compress them. With rain, the wood matter will break down over the fall and winter seasons. I will also be adding lawn trimmings on top.

Once we have the beds filled and fully prepared, I will purchase the garden mix soil to add to the top, allowing the wood to break down more effectively.

So, as always, it’s a work in progress.I will talk about it more in the coming months.

Now then, is it true Hugelkultur? Not quite. But that is the best part of gardening…You can do what works for YOU. My beds won’t be mounded up and high. They will be in pretty, standardized-sized raised beds. They will look just like they were filled with 100% ready-to-use soil. But I will have a vested interest in it. I oddly took that away from our Permaculture class. Use the principles and make it work for you. Perhaps that isn’t exactly what was being taught, but then my mind has always worked a bit differently.

~Sarah

Herbalist Training And How It Plays Into Permaculture

July 15, 2024 Sarah

When I first started studying herbalism on my quest to be an herbalist, I never saw how I would be able to connect it to the practice of permaculture. Permaculture wasn’t even in my mind then, nor was regenerative growing. I started studying around 2017 to learn more about the herbs I used in my body care product business. The years when I started creating tonics, salves, soaps, healing essential oil blends, and so much more. I wanted education to support my actions so I would not harm.

I wrote this book about the recipes I was using then.

But the growing aspect wasn’t quite there, as we had a tiny urban homestead.

Then, I got so busy building a rural homestead I left behind my herbalism studies and put all my effort into growing food first. That wasn’t a bad thing; it was just a season in my life. The Covid years changed what I was doing. I was so busy homeschooling the boys and growing food/plants that my herbal business slowly went to the back of my life, and I quit selling at farmer’s markets (and adding in how restrictive the rules were at the local farmers market in the pandemic years).

But this year, as I fought the dreaded 6-year homesteading year (it’s a real thing when burnout hits), I realized I missed learning. It was time to go back to my education. Take my interest in permaculture and the desire to rebuild our homestead into more of a permanent food forest where herb plants get a chance to shine.

With time on hand during the hot parts of the day this Summer, I have started retaking herbalist training, starting with the Herbal Academy’s Becoming An Herbalist Mini Course, free to take. Always start small, and get that excitement and drive back. Come this Fall, I have more classes lined up to take. I want to take that knowledge this winter and start my new permaculture-inspired growth. (I reviewed the course a while back, but taking it a second time…. opens my eyes up to things I missed the first time.)

As I opened up the mini-course in the first section, I was hit with this:

“Students of herbalism may also aspire to be plant growers, with a focus on owning or working for an herb farm on both small and large scales. This work will likely appeal to individuals who like to work outside and with their bodies and who crave direct relationships with the plants themselves. Many vegetable farmers manage to incorporate a variety of herbs into crop rotation and garden bed planning, while permaculturists and landscapers may create food forests with herbs as part of a sustainable and holistic design. Still others are interested in creating plant sanctuaries as a part of land stewardship and ecological education, focusing on integrating and protecting native plants in wild settings.”

It was like I had not read this the first time, all those years ago.

“The contemporary herbalist exists in a long line of practitioners who work at the intersection of land stewardship and health, and this intersection is only one of many that an herbalist may need to navigate.”

Another line, in Lesson 3, had me thinking.

“As the much-loved botanist, clinical herbalist, teacher of herbalists, and Herbal Academy educator 7Song notes, community-based herbalism involves a variety of aspects of herbal practice, which may include growing plants, making herbal products, seeing clients, and understanding intimately the community in which the herbalist works (7Song, n.d.)”

From Lesson 3. That is very much how I work in life. I learn for myself and then to help those around me.

This summer, my mind has been excited. I did not realize how I had subconsciously changed our growing style over the past few years until Kirk, and I, took part in a permaculture class. Someday, we might get certified, but the truth is that it isn’t cheap, and it takes at least two weeks to complete. That is a lot when one has a job and family.

In my spare time, I could study more about plants—why I should care about them, how to grow them, and, once again, how to use them. Maybe becoming certified in permaculture wasn’t my most important goal; rather, increasing my skills in growing and using plants and working with nature was.

I have my dreams for sure. If the first 6 years were us running around to conquer the mess our land was, then the next 6 can be us working with the now healed land, to get to my dreams. No, I won’t have the fantasy AI photo above, but slowly it will become something even cooler than now.

And that is why this summer and fall, my mind is running to learn even more. To build a deeper appreciation of permaculture.

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading

Building A Food Forest With Edible Perennials

July 1, 2024 Sarah

One of our long-term goals on our homestead has been building densely planted food forests, where most are perennial. Planting once and eating every year has been my goal for long-term sustainability.

While we have carved out garden beds to grow in (because of deer) that are fenced, 2 of the biggest beds grow wild now. Yes, I do weed to a certain point and water in the hottest weeks still, but it is every year getting to where I need to maintain it less. Just prune as needed and fertilize yearly.

Less work is the goal, with the promise of food to come.

These beds are The Orchard, Berry Bed, and The Strawberry walk-in cage.

What do we grow?

We have planted these plants over the past five years, and most have survived. I have noted what grows well in our area.

Of course, your mileage may vary depending on what grows in your microclimate. This may mean you lose plants here and there, but that is part of the learning.

Berries:

Strawberries, native strawberries, alpine strawberries.

Blueberries. We currently have about ten varieties to avoid a mono-crop.

Raspberries, golden raspberries, marionberries, blackberries. (Multiple varieties)

Kiwi Berries.

Grapes. (Multiple varieties)

Gooseberry.

Lingonberry.

Fruit and Nut Trees:

Plum, peach (frost type), apples, and pears have all done well.

Figs (cold hardy).

Olives (cold hardy, grow at last 2)).

Elderberry (at least 2)

Asparagus:

I keep growing more from seed every year; in the second to third year, you can transplant it into the ground. Once established, it lives on its own. Cutting it often encourages new growth.

Rhubarb:

When we moved rural, I quaintly thought I needed 15 plants. One or two is just fine. But do plant it; it’s a pretty plant. It’ll need water for the first few years and pruning of dying-back leaves, which encourages new growth all season.

Artichokes:

Grow as many as you can. Whether or not you eat them or let them go to flower, they are beautiful and tall. Native bees love the flowers.

Herbs:

Unless you live where it is snow-covered or deep freezes for months, many herbs come back yearly, especially culinary ones. Once they are established, a good trim/pruning and annual fertilizing are usually all you need to do. You may lose one or two if there is an extreme freeze. Otherwise, watering is often only needed first year and during heat waves in summer.

Potatoes:

Once planted, potatoes love to hide baby potatoes you miss in harvesting. They love to come back on their own.

Also, if you harvest damaged potatoes, toss them back in the ground to grow a new crop, even if they are rotten or have insect damage.

Garlic (sometimes):

Garlic can rip when pulled out and will come back up again the next year if cloves are left behind. Letting hard-neck garlic go to flower will produce garlic bulblets that will seed it naturally. (This happened to us last year in an outlying field that is full of feral garlic now.)

Letting Native Plants Take Root:

Evergreen Huckleberry.

Red Huckleberry.

Thimbleberry.

Salal.

Salmonberry.

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading

Never Stop Chasing New Ideas

June 24, 2024 Sarah

A few weeks back, a long-time permaculture instructor gave a free talk on the island. She has decades of experience, and why wouldn’t we want to explore it? It was enough that after attending the discussion, I attended the first two days of her 2-week long permaculture certification class. Taking the entire class wasn’t within my realm for now, but the first two days were where the basics of permaculture were opened up to us. She graciously opened it up to people wanting to take day one and day two before they delved into the deep part and started working on an actual site assessment to earn their certifications.

The biggest takeaway is that, intuitively, we have been practicing permaculture without realizing it on our land. We are repairing the forest, balancing nature, and filling our land with animals and pollinators. Even how we grow food reflects this. There is a huge difference between how we grew food in our last two homes and how we grow food on the land here. My goal has always been to have a food forest with many layers connected in their own way. When the land is bare and open, it is hard to envision it. Even in winter, it is hard to see. But as spring passes into early summer, watching it all come together, my happiness increases rapidly as the plants grow, covering everything.

Knowing we had been doing the right thing all along was a feeling of happiness. Allowing the land to practice rewilding in areas was positive. It was letting the land “garden” itself reclaiming how it should be naturally.

But it opened my eyes to what we could also be doing. And I came out very inspired.

The other huge takeaway for me was working with zones.

And I realized that for our land, we do have issues.

For a while, we had Zone 1 in the first two years here; as we opened up the land in Zone 2, I turned my back on Zone 1. Zone 1 needs so much love. It needs to be used more to have more “kitchen garden” space so that we can walk out and have food easily to harvest, which can be used within minutes of harvesting.

But it also made me realize that Zones 1 and 2 are disjointed. They need to be better connected.

Zone 2 sits 1-2 acres below our home, which is Zone 1. To walk there, one has to take the driveway. If the land is wet or hot, one is less likely to want to go down for extended periods. Walking outside the house and just being there is sustainable. Again, it opens the mind to think and dream of what we can do. We have plenty of Zone 3, 4, and 5. But we need more use of Zone 1. Be it a small greenhouse that encourages me to grow more citrus in winter and more raised beds out the doors to fanciful projects like an herbal spiral, I came out inspired to start planning.

Just dipping our toes into permaculture was well worth it.

~Sarah