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Chris, Birkenhead

You don’t have to be an avid gardener to compost your food scraps. We’re sharing stories of people who are composting for all sorts of reasons! Tell us a bit about yourself My name is Chris and I live in Birkenhead with my partner. We have a house with its own garden, but the soil

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Lessons Learned

Our facilitator Jennifer’s been creating a hugelkultur raised garden bed and sharing her journey with us along the way. Here’s her final blog post. Now that I finished my hugelkultur bed (yay!) I have reflected on what I learnt during the process and what in hindsight I might have done differently. Huge thank yous!  First,

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Mulching

It’s time for step 9 – mulching, as Jennifer builds a hugelkultur raised garden bed at her property. Step 9 – Adding mulch To protect the soil and the seedlings I chose to mulch my hugelkultur bed. I wanted something natural that would provide a protective cover for my soil and around my seedlings that

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Soil and Seedlings

Jennifer’s up to step 8, adding soil and seedlings, in the process of creating a hugelkultur bed at her property. Step 8 – Adding soil and seedlings Putting the soil on top of the hugelkultur bed was hard work. Possibly harder than digging the soil out in the first place. I needed to lift the

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Adding Compost

Here’s update seven from our facilitator Jennifer, who is creating a hugelkultur bed at her property. Step 7 – Adding Compost I used about half a wheelbarrow of home made compost that had been maturing for more than a year. I sprinkled it on the top of the hugelkultur bed and let it fall down

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Adding Compostable Materials

Here’s the sixth update from our facilitator Jennifer, as she creates a hugelkultur bed at her property. Step 6 – Adding Compostable Green and Brown Materials On top of the turf you can add whatever other compostable materials you have available. Ideally, include some green materials that have lots of nitrogen, are fresh, moist and

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Adding Turf

Here’s the fifth stage of our facilitator Jennifer’s progress as she creates a hugelkultur bed at her property. Step 5 – Adding the Turf I thought adding the turf would be easy and it was, but it was a little more fiddly than I expected! When I removed the turf I cut it roughly into

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Layering Logs

Here’s the fourth update from our Compost Collective facilitator Jennifer, who is sharing how she’s creating a hugelkultur bed at her property. Step 4 – Layering the logs Logs don’t come in a standard shape or size so this was trickier than I thought it would be. It felt like completing a jigsaw puzzle with

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Preparing the Ground

Here’s the third update from our Compost Collective facilitator Jennifer, who is sharing how she’s creating a hugelkultur bed at her property. Step 3 – Preparing the ground Once you’ve confirmed there are enough logs to fill the bottom of the bed (and there’s an opportunity here to make your bed bigger or smaller depending

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Creating a Hugelkultur Raised Garden Bed – Collecting Logs

Here’s the second update from our Compost Collective facilitator Jennifer, who is sharing how she’s creating a hugelkultur bed at her property. Step 2 – Collecting logs I collected all the big old logs from around our property to check we have enough to fill the hugelkultur bed.  The pile is pretty big now! The

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