Building a Hugelkultur mound was labor intensive, but the payoff made it all worth it. Check out our fruit and vegetable haul!
Continuing from Part One of the Hugelkultur blog, this blog highlights the fruits and vegetables of our labor. In early June 2020, we planted several kinds of tomatoes, squash, cucumber, zucchini, pumpkins, romaine lettuce, spinach, borage, and zinnias. We planted the zinnias to draw in pollinators, but the hummingbirds also seemed to love them. All plants did well except for the cucumbers. I have no doubt that cucumbers can be grown successfully on Hugelkultur mounds in the Northeast, but in our case, they struggled because they were shaded out by the other thriving plants. The squash and pumpkins grew so quickly that they were bordering on being out of control.
Early June, shortly after planting. By this time, the risk of a late frost had passed. Note that we started growing these plants inside.
June 18
Yellow squash on July 12.
July 25.
July 30
August 30
September 5
Despite our efforts to cover them, our tomatoes fell victim to frost on Sept. 18.
Around September 21, all of the plants were taken down. We spread a cover crop seed mix, which cost about $6 for the bag. These seeds should sprout in the fall and early spring to hold the soil in place while also reintroducing nutrients into the mound.
I am probably forgetting all of the work that went into building the mound, but it was so successful, I would consider putting in a second in a future year. There are a lot of variables of course, but I would very roughly estimate that a mound of this size produces 25 to 33% of a small family’s fruits/vegetables for the year.
Check out: Hugelkultur: Part One
