Hugelkultur works!

This 4th year of my vegetable garden, I got inspired after reading about Hugelkultur and decided to give it a try.

Here are links to this info:
http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/
http://www.permies.com/forums/f-2/permaculture  (search for 'hugelkultur, many discussions)

I dug 3 beds each only about 4'x4' to a depth of ~1.5' and then added lots of wood in, layering it up with dirt.

I used local leaves and pine needles as mulch and then watched the film "Back to Eden", got inspired and added about 2" of wood chip mulch to my entire garden & fruit tree area.

No compost was added to these beds, only logs, leaf mulch layer, than a top woodchip mulch layer.
For one bed I did add purchased organic fertilizer. The other beds I only added my own home-prepared liquid organic fertilizer (another post). All the beds are doing great.

It is the first year my garden in this spot has been a success! Now producing way more squash than several families can eat. Tomatoes and cukes just starting to ripen.

Only planted squash on top of the hugelkultur beds.  But did plants some tomatos next to the beds and some tomatos away from the hugelkultur beds.  The tomato plants close to the hugelkultur beds are doing much, much better than the other ones just planted in freshly dug clay (with the leaf and woodchip mulch).

The first 3 years of failure

For the first 3 years my heavy clay garden has been pretty much a failure.

The 1st year I cleared away the Juniper trees, dug beds while mixing in some pine needles and just a few branches.

This "hugelkultur lite" approach didn't work well. Garden did poorly but with some harvest.


2nd year, under the inspiration of "One Straw Revolution" I just planted as is, no new digging. Big failure, no harvest except pole beans.


3rd year, I planted cover crops for the winter and hoped again to give no-till a chance. Planted vegetables directly amongst cereal rye cover crops. Another big failure. The soil was too compact and without a good mulch the soil became hard.  The drip irrigation only kept the soil wet about 3-4" away from each emitter, not enough for the plants.

4th year, success finally using hugelkultur.

Hello Gardeners,

This infrequent blog will share gardening observations and techniques that are somewhat uncommon and hopefully useful to others.

My own gardening focus follows several areas of exploration:

1.  First time success. How to grow a good vegetable garden right away without first building up the soil over years, without using compost, without using any purchased fertilizers.  The idea is that if you needed to all of a sudden start growing some of your own food, what can you do, and do it organically. Compost is obviously great for a garden and if you have it, use it. But for a first time garden, most people will not have been composting themselves and to save money, might not want to purchase compost.

2.   No wilt gardening.  My own garden only gets afternoon sun, not morning sun. This creates great challenges I've found. By the time the sun hits the plants, it is already hot and they start wilting, so they don't get a lot of good direct sunlight photosynthesis time.  Morning sun, before it gets hot and the plants start wilting is the best.
This especially retards transplants and seedling growth.  The young plants need a lot of shade, until the roots get established.  Comparing my garden to others in the area, I believe my transplants and direct seeded plants take an extra 3 weeks to get established.
So figuring out how to get young plants "wilt free" in direct afternoon sunlight has/is a key focus for me.

3.  Low maintenance, low cost gardening. I like setting up gardens, but not maintaining them.

If you've found some useful techniques along these lines, please comment and share.

Happy gardening,
GardenSeek