- 10 Months ago, right in
line with this scene here, I buried a duck. Let's dig this duck. Is the chicken in there? - Oh what is this. - Good day. I'm Mark from Self Sufficient Me. And in this video, I'm gonna share with you
the many things you can bury in a raised garden bed. Let's get into it. (gentle music) Now I know what you're thinking. Mother-in-law? Well, besides not being very nice, I've heard that joke before. So if you must mention
what you'd like to bury in raised garden beds, such as this, please write something different down in the comment section below. So what can we bury in
a raised garden bed? Well, I've got some really good
examples right here for you. These newly filled
birdies raised garden beds were placed over the top of
our old wooden sleeper beds. So instead of chucking
out the rotten old wood, we put it back into the base. Wooden logs, take a
long time to break down and are excellent for
creating the ancient technique of Hugelkultur. Not just a really cool thing to say, but Hugelkultur means
Mound Culture in German. The way it can be done in
these raised garden beds is just a bit of a modern spin. Larger animals, such as
poultry can be buried. Unfortunately, we had a
hen drop off the perch the other day, so I buried
her in the pet cemetery, I mean in the garden bed. I'm looking for the dead
chicken and look at that. What is that? That is a dog dig. Obviously, he is smelling
the chicken in the garden bed and wanted a piece of it. Let's have a look and
see if that dead chicken is actually in here
and what it looks like. Right, yep. I'm glad you're doing it
'cause you've got gloves on. - Yeah, that's why I (indistinct). - [Mark] Is the chicken in there? - [Hunter] What is this
that's, not sure, whatever. - Most maybe close to this side? - Yeah. Was it a big chicken? - Oh, it was just a standard. There it is. - There it is. - That's the chicken. - Oh yeah, there's his feet. So there's the chicken in there. We won't dig up anymore. So that's why there's a
dig from this other side. - That smells bad. - Trynna get into it and then
we'll cover it with oranges to make it not smell. - Brilliant, smell the oranges. - There we go. - In hindsight, I should have buried the chicken in the center of the bedside. It wouldn't encourage the dog to dig. 10 months ago, right in
line with this scene here, I buried a duck in the garden bed about probably a foot down, right here. Normally I'd wait about 12
months before I dig up an animal. Actually, normally I
wouldn't dig up an animal, but for science sake, let's dig this duck. Over the past 12 months, we've had lots of things growing in here. Ginger, asparagus, which
has all died back now that it's winter, I just had to trim this all back because we had a pumpkin vine. This is actually exactly
where the pumpkin was. Well, one of the pumpkins
growing right through. So it's had a lot of
plants, sucking nutrients. And our wonder if anything has been taken out of that duck there. So I ride in lawn with
this same, lets go for it. (digging) Plenty of worms. There we go. Just like an archeologist, I better start going a bit slower. Here's a bone. So another bone. (digging) More bones. What's that? Is that a duck foot? Yeah, it looks like a duck foot. Bone. Bone. There's another bone. Just the bigger bones,
leg bones and things. That's it. Just, this handful of
bones is all that's left. Actually I'm a bit surprised, I thought I might find
a bit more than that. Well, there you go. That was pretty interesting. You can just see how well all
those nutrients was used up. The disappearing duck. The other things you can
bury in a garden bed, and this is not limited, but the things that I have is cardboard, weeds, kitchen scraps, old eggs, pigeons and practically anything really. Some people will say that if they buried these types of things in the garden, all that would happen is a wild animal, like a bear would come
along and dig it up. Personally, if I lived
somewhere like that. What I'll do is I'd have my veggie garden in a big enclosure, just
like a tennis court fence, all the way around and possibly even have
a mesh roof as well. I'm pretty serious about
my home ground veg. But seriously, why would
you wanna bury your mother, I mean things in a raised
garden bed like this anyway? Well, here are five really good reasons. Number one, to add fill,
premium soil is expensive. And if you are filling a
large raised garden bed, or often more than one,
that requires a lot of fill, most veggies only need about
30 centimeters or 12 inches of medium to grow. So anything under that is a
waste of good premium soil. Number two, to add nutrients, whenever you add organic
matter to a garden bed, it eventually breaks down. And this turns into nutrients
that enrich the soil and can be used as plant food. Even those things very deep down, which brings me to number three, encourage worms and other animals. Worms and animals such as
merely bugs or bacteria break down buried organic matter. They eat it and then they
move, aerating the soil, pooping and peeing and
transferring those nutrients all around the garden. Number four, is to improve
water and nutrient holding. Dead soil means a dead
dry sandy garden bed where water just runs straight through and nutrients get washed away. Burying organic matter in the
garden bed acts like a sponge to hold water and nutrients. So the plants have longer
and a better chance of accessing these elements. And number five is a
sustainable way to reuse waste. Collectively we humans throw
out way too much organic waste into refuse tips. This waste could simply
be turned back into plant and animal food in our own backyards to improve the environment around us, or even save costs on
fertilizer, water, and energy. Anyway, just getting back to these beds. The main fill used in these
was actually wood chip or wood mulch. This stuff has been sitting
in piles for months now and has gone through the
early stages of decay, making it a perfect, easy
to obtain and free medium or organic matter to add to a garden bed. And because it has
broken down quite a bit, it whined heat up the
beds like fresh marshall, fresh wood chip wood. And it won't sink as quickly either for wood chip and other types
of softer plant-based fill. I will usually fill the
bed space almost to the top living about 30 centimeters of space to add the premium soil,
compost and fertilizer. Over time, the bids will sink and you can even see
that this one that I did a couple of weeks ago earlier, has already started to
sink down a little bit, especially around the sides. You add more compost
and soil over the years as that bed sinks and then the garden bed develops into this rich quality bio diverse soil that your plants will love. And in turn will produce
a ton of healthy veggies for you to eat. Well, hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, make sure you
bury that thumb right up into the clouds and give
this video a big thumbs up. Also share it around because
that helps my channel out heaps and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks a lot for watching. Bye for now. Cheers.
