An Experiment with Hugelkultur

Hoogle what?  Hugelkultur.  It is a german word pronounced "hoogle culture" and it means hill mound.  If you search on the Internet, you can find numerous articles about this gardening practice.  I have been reading about it and decided to try it in our garden.  I am a novice in the practice, but it is not a new thing.  In fact, it has been in use for hundreds of years.

If you think about it, trees and all living vegetation uptakes nutrients from the soil and grows.  Many people bag those things up and/or load branches and limbs and transport them off of their property. Many others, like me, always have a 'burn pile' going to burn twigs, branches, and limbs that constantly fall out of the trees.  That eliminates your problem with refuse, but the nutrients from your property are literally 'going up in smoke.'  It is best to import nutrients and fertility onto your land or at least maintain it, rather than exporting it.

As I said, you can find numerous articles and diagrams on the Internet explaining the process.  I linked this explanation and image with the link under the following image.  I thought it was informative.

Image Credit

So my feelings on it are that hugelkultur can actually help me in three different ways:  First, it will add fertility to the soil.  Next it will place moisture in 'reserve' during drought years.  Finally, it will raise the level of my soil on the south (lower) elevation of the garden which should help during wet years.  I chopped up some partially rotten live oak branches that had fallen out of the trees during the recent storms.  Most of them were between 4-5 inches in diameter.  I loaded them in our gorilla cart and pulled them into the garden.

I picked out a good spot in the walkway between two rows  and began to dig a pit that was about four feet long by 2 feet deep.  I hope you can see something in the photo below that is a real encouraging sign.  You can tell where the line of clay starts.  There is about 1 1/2 foot of topsoil above that level.  Where I live we don't have that much topsoil, but due to composting and constantly amending the soil with leaves and organic matter, we've been able to really improve the soil!

Once the pit was dug, I threw some biochar at the bottom along with some composted cow manure. It looks like we're about to have a burial and actually we are.

We are going to bury some live oak logs in the bottom of the pit.

Then I began shoveling the dirt on top of the logs.

When I was finished, the walkway between the two rows that was lower than the rows is now level with the rows.  Mission accomplished.  Next year I'll move the rows over one space so that this year's walkways are next year's rows.  As the logs decompose, the roots will grow deep and feed off of the logs' fertility that is banked in the soil.

Now I called this an experiment.  Actually, I won't know if it was successful for quite a while.  That's okay, though.  Building soil and gardening is a lifelong pursuit.  One thing I'm sure of is that limbs will continue to fall out of the trees.  I'll have more than enough material to try the hugelkulture practice on as much of the garden as I have the energy to dig pits on.  Happy Gardening to you!