Building Hugelkultur Garden Beds

Each spring I prep garden beds, pull weeds, often till the soil and start my plantings.

Each year, my plants die, or get eaten or just don't thrive. Or a combination of all three. The most success I've had has been with herbs and some other annuals. When my veggie plants do grow nicely, they often don't produce more.

Knowing that just a few inches under my garden soil lays clay, I've always tried to supplement with natural materials I have on hand (compost, chicken poop, decaying wood chips, etc), but it seems to never be enough.

A few years ago my mom, sister and I built hugelkultur beds and had good luck growing potatoes in them. So this year, I decided I'll build as many as I can, and try to grow most of my produce in these hills.

Hugelkultur means mound culture -- these garden beds are essentially piles of logs and branches, covered over with topsoil. The idea is that the wood decays slowly, providing good drainage during times of rain and releasing retained water in droughts. It should also warm up faster in the spring due to bacteria causing composting to occur, and the wood will release nutrients into the soil.

Of course, you can get fancier than the basics, which can help with effectiveness of hugelkultur beds, particularly by adding nitrogen sources to balance the carbon of the wood.

This is how I built my beds:

First, I dug out my plot (roughly 4 ft by 8 ft) about 4-5 inches deep. Then I filled it with a few logs and more branches which I obtained by pruning some apple and pear trees.

Next I added a layer of chicken manure (with some newspapers -- which I'd prefer to omit due to possibilities of toxins in the ink, but there was good poop on those papers, which I didn't want to waste). On top of the manure I added compost from my home pile.

Then I meant to add wood ash, but forgot, so I put the top soil back on. Remembering the ash, I added a generous layer, and then wood chips as mulch -- these chips had been decaying for a year or two.

Finally, I planted a corner up with spinach! It's been slow growing, making me wish I had covered it to speed things along. But I have high hopes for a better harvest this year than I've experienced before!

What's your favorite way to garden?