If you are anything like me and you have been living under a rock for what feels like an age, you might be thinking, what the?? when you hear the term hügelkultur. Who knew there was more to gardening than water and sunshine?
As I have mentioned, I enjoy following various YouTube channels as my lazy form of research. To be fair, is it considered lazy when you are taking advice form those who have already tried and failed before, perfecting their craft or area of expertise?
Wikipedia tells us that “Hügelkultur is a German word meaning mound culture or hill culture.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCgelkultur#:~:text=H%C3%BCgelkultur%20is%20a%20German%20word,gardening%20booklet%20by%20Herrman%20Andr%C3%A4.
The idea is relatively simple. You build your raised garden bed using organic material from the garden. Over time, these materials break down providing your garden with essential nutrients.
The raised mound is comprised of various layers:
Base layer: logs and tree stumps
Layer 1: smaller branches
Layer 2: garden waste such as leaves and twigs
Layer 3: this is where you would start adding in your manure and compost
Final layer: top soil
If this seems like a lot of work and effort, ( don’t be shy, I’ve been there) the following benefits might just grab your attention!
Some of the benefits of using hügelkultur as a method of planting include:
- cost effective as you use a lot of garden waste and debris, which brings us to point 2…
- it is an efficient and easy way to get rid of your garden waste!
- over time as the wood decomposes, it warms up the soil, creating a longer growing time, as its keeps roots warm
- during the decomposing period, vital critters are introduced into your soil aiding in soil health.
- the decomposing wood and debris provide essential nutrients
Returning to my own experience and garden experiment, I adapted this approach and applied it to my raised garden beds. If I am honest, I did it mainly from a cost cutting point of view! Filling up raised garden beds can quickly become expensive! I will say, the more I learn about this way of gardening and its benefits, the happier I am that I decided to give it a go, even if heavily adapted! Now I do not have access to tree stumps and fallen branches as we do not have a lot of trees on our property. I therefore do not have an endless supply of leaves and debris. On the one hand I am rather thankful for that last point!
I had to get a little creative and use what I had on hand. I layered the beds with cardboard first (from our moving boxes) to prevent any grass and weeds growing through the beds. Do not skip this step! The last thing you want to do is to waste your time pulling out weeds and grass sprouts. Cardboard is a great choice as it is environmentally friendly in that it does decompose over time. It was an added benefit that it helped me get rid of some of our boxes too!
I did have a few branches and twigs lying around after we did a little maintenance, so I used those as my base layer, followed by dry grass clippings. Did I mention I like to experiment? After the grass clippings I added a few leaves, followed by a final layer of compost and top soil.
We have had some great success with these beds growing a variety of produce; capsicums, carrots, radish, lettuce, tomatoes, sweetcorn and marigold. I have since added eggplant, sweet potato and peanuts! These photo’s below do not do these beds any justice! I have a bad habit of taking produce pics along the way and not full garden pics. Note to self: take more photos!
One tip I do have for you is to fill your garden beds to the lip of the raised bed! I had to top up a few times as the layers settled. I may even wait a few days before planting to give the layers some chance to settle. This is largely due to the fact that I added grass clippings.
We will be adding quite a few more raised garden beds this year and I will continue to experiment with the layers and soil, as I can only work with what I have at this stage.
I hope this has been helpful to those of you who have been toying with the idea of adding hügelkultur into your gardening skill set.
If you would like to see how we filled the bed a bit more in-depth, watch our YouTube video below: