Hugelkultur!

My super clay soil always needs improvement. As does my neighbor Leo's super clay soil that I garden in. So this spring break, I dug out a new style of beds in his yard and made a hugelkultur.

I'm not sure if "made" is the right term. Could hugelkultur be a verb? I think not. At any rate, here's what I did.

First, I had my brother haul over a truckload of wood trimmings from my Aunt Pat's house. I also used my Christmas tree trunk and branches. I bought a sack of alfalfa pellets at Concentrates, my favorite place to buy amendments. Then I did nothing because school happened and fall happened and winter happened and suddenly it was spring break.
In Leo's backyard, I spread the alfalfa pellets in a U shape, because I was making keyhole beds. Then, I set the branches and twigs, etc on top in the same U shape.
After that, I dug up dirt to cover the branches.
I did this over and over again until I had several U shaped beds. It was a lot of work.

Mine was a small scale project. This link is a bigger bed built with the help of a tractor.
http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

And here you can see the difference between a hugekultur bed and a regular bed.
http://saponaria-wortsandall.blogspot.com/2008/07/hugelkultur-compared.html