Permaculture Swale #2 - lining with wood Hugelculture Style

Welcome to another update on the Be Prepared Channel. It has been a very busy day building the second permaculture swale using wood from a tree we cut down this week. I was surprised that that swale consumed most of the top portion of the tree we cut down this week. I also elected to just break down the branches and line the swale with branches, sticks and some of the logs up to about 4-6" in diameter. Once I had the sheet mulch in place and the branches I then started filling the swale with composted horse manure. I have spent a good portion of the day just getting that part done. Once I had that in place it was time to go run to the big box store and spend some money on peat, compost, and vermiculite.

Now I am here to tell you that gardening this way is NOT CHEAP! Anyone with some common sense would just take their time from season to season and build up their compost production, work to put these beds in place from the soil, and things on the property, and worst case they would carefully shop the free listings on Craigslist for fill dirt, leaves, mulch, cardboard boxes etc. That would be the wise thing to do, and just take your time. However with things being the way they are in our economy and job stability being non-existent I feel we have reached that inflection point this year that it will take some "SHOCK and AWE" in my yard to kick start this thing. Not the preferred method, and this is not what I would truly call "Permaculture". True permaculture would use what we have available and promote the systems with what we have on hand and over time we would build a sustainable growing space, but sadly time constraints make that not workable at this point. So shock and awe gardening it is!

So today several trips to the home improvement store for "black gold" and I now have the basic supplies to finish up the second swale in the morning. I will tell you I am tired after all this hauling of stuff all over the yard and at the store and at home. Boy shock and awe gardening is hard work! Not to mention the shock and AWEful feeling my wallet got today. So I think I am close to wrapping up the fun factor here for the day. I may go out and move a few more bags of compost to where I am going to put it in the swale, and some peat too and call it a day. I am posting a video I took earlier today showing the wood branches lining the swale before I started burying it in manure. I will follow up with a video of what it looks like when we have all the layers on it. We will be putting some leaf litter on top, then layer some peat moss, then compost. So I will let you see what it looks like when done. Next on the list this weekend is to setup our conventional raised beds. Looks like that will be the project for tomorrow at this rate. It really is surprising just how much effort it takes to setup the basic infrastructure/framework for a garden. The good news is that the heavy lifting phase is now at the beginning and fortunately this isn't an annual thing. I considering it an investment that will repay us for years to come. Invest in yourself and in tangible things. Prices on everything are going up and the ability to grow safe, healthy, organic foods at your home could offset a substantial portion of your grocery bill which as you know is growing faster than most paychecks. At the rate things are increasing I honestly don't think in will take but a couple of growing seasons to fully repay you for all your effort, costs, and time it took to setup your garden space. So if you haven't decided to put a garden in yet this year what is holding you up?



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