Mound Gardens - Easy Way to Grow a Fall Garden

It's time to plant fall garden beds. Saved seeds, cushaw and spaghetti squash are sprouting up in the mounds.

These simple mounds are made of leaves mixed with wood ash, sand, dirt and horse manure. We add more leaves each year and keep planting.  Each season we clear off the bed, stir with a rock rake or pitch fork, then plant saved seeds directly into the mound. After planting, sprinkle the mound lightly with dry beans. Plant just before it rains and let nature do the work of sprouting your seeds. Pinto, great northern, black beans, and navy beans will grow well this way and give you a double crop. The beans add nitrogen to the mound helping your other plants to grow in a natural way.

After studying permaculture I found that Hugelkultur, an ancient farming techniqe, is the cheapest, easiest method to build better mounds of organic material for gardening. The use of wood was a revelation! Now we save all our palm fronds,brush and tree trimmings for new garden mounds.