hugelkultur - the ultimate raised garden beds

[Dreamwalker.]

anyone tried this?...................I've done little baby ones about 300mm high................just to save my plants/trees from wet feet in the winter........give them some drainage......didn't realise there was a name for it.............really inspiring.....................Huger culture huger culture huger culture

.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Sso4UWObxXg

Edited March 17, 2014 by Dreamwalker

[whoami]

lots of people around here do it to grow sweet potatoes. big log on the ground, cover it with mulch/compost, let it break down a bit, then plant sweet potatoes. then dump kitchen scraps, grass clippings, mulch on top and the potatoes just go nuts. very easy to dig em out a e tgeres bloody shitloads

[Torsten]

My mum started doing these when i was about 5. It was the latest gardening trend then [40 years ago]. However, there was a distinct feature of those beds that seems to be lacking in the current ones. It was very much about air rather than just wood in the soil. If you put wood into clay soil you end up with stinky stagnant yuck and it doesn't really give you a lot of benefits. So all the design was focussed on keeping airspaces in the wood section.

here is a description of how we used to do it.

remove grass in sod form and pile sods aside. Dig 20cm deep and pile soil aside.

Fill the ditch with branches from 20cm to 2cm diameter, descreasing in size as you layer upwards. make sure layers are criss crossed to create lots of air spaces. The height you pile the wood depends on the width of the bed as you want to make sure the finished sides aren't too steep. for a 1m wide bed we went about 30cm high above natural ground level with the wood. So that's a total of 50cm from base of ditch.

Now cover the wood with lots of tiny twigs, then straw or leaves. we followed an urban design so usually used leaves.

Take the sods and stack face down (!!) from the bottom edges right to the crown. Push little pieces of sod into any cracks. The bed is now completely sealed.

Use compost or good soil to put a layer of soil over the whole thing. Water and sow/plant.

We made these in germany where it would drop to well below minus 10C and stay like that for days. While everything was covered in snow these beds rarely had any snow on them and the soil certainly never froze right through. The insulated airspaces and the slow decomposition kept the soil warm. This means a vastly extended growing season. It also kept worms near the surface and even mice did their part inside the airspaces.

The yields were phenomenal. Even the most heavily manured perfect soil bed would produce less than half of what these beds did. Mostly because of the aeration and temperature I think. Harvests were much faster. Everything would root down rather than sideways so planting density was about double.

After 5 years the beds would be mostly collapsed and would be perfect soil. The worm activity would dramatically improve the soil for at least 1m on all sides.

I really do not see how the beds in the vid have all of these benefits. The wood might retain more water, but that's only a fraction of the story. Aerated and heated roots make all the difference.

I have not built one of these in australia. Not sure if there would be much benefit in the subtropics other than drainage. But I reckon they are perfect for colder parts of Vic and tas.

[Foo]

Thanks for sharing Torsten, i will commit some of that to memory.

[Torsten]

[watertrade]

Less bending over for those of us with dicky backs too. Kind of....

Edit: Actually now I think about it . Rather than just bending over . You would be bending across. So it may be worst for your back . :D

Edited September 25, 2013 by watertrade

[planthelper]

but not recommended for the hot tropics, unless over winter, as said...

this thread makes me realize how, a german word inspires non german speakers,

like a latin church mess in the old day's...

Edited September 25, 2013 by planthelper

[Dreamwalker.]

thanks Torsten....nice detail..................ideal for us temperates...............