After working out an arrangement with a local food rescue we now have access to an industrial supply of compost. Every week we can pick up hundreds of pounds of food scraps from local grocery stores. What was once a small compost pile consisting of food scraps from my kitchen has increased by a couple orders of magnitude. The current pile size is approximately 3 meters long by 1 meter wide and 0.5 meters tall.
When we get new material to add to the compost pile we mix it with hay, leaves, and mulch to add carbon and absorb moisture. Whenever we turn the compost you can see steam rising from the pile and when you stand on top of it you can feel the heat radiating out of the ground.
The terraces are all growing nicely after we put pallet fencing around all of the garden plants. In fact the pallet fencing works too well, in that it also prevents me from getting into the garden area. So lately I've started walking on top of the hugels, using them as elevated pathways.
We've got a nice modest harvest this year considering how little effort I put into taking care of the plants. No irrigation necessary, all watered by storing precipitation in the soil.
