Hugelkulture beds are basically raised bed, either contained by an edging or just mounded up anywhere on your property. Many of you are familiar with a compost pile, well, Hugelkulture composts your organic wastes IN the soil in the bottoms of your beds.
The best way to build a hugelkultur bed is to choose a sunny area of your property and either strip off and save the sod, or cover it with cardboard or newspaper to kill off the weeds and grasses. You can if you desire dig a ditch, hole, or completely dig out an area and save the soil, or build your bed on top of the ground smothering the weeds and grasses. This method builds a raised bed and is wonderful for poor, clay, or damaged soils. Our soil where I built these hugel beds was heavy sodden clay.
The first bed I built is the one closest on the top photograph. I chose to remove about a foot of soil from the area, saving it for the top, and I filled the ditch with a pile of large tree trunks stacked lengthwise in a pyramid. Then I put smaller branches, twigs, leaves, compost and stacked the upside down sod over top of the trunks and branches and compost. You can use any type of organic materials, but larger pieces of wood are best for large beds, as they hold water, break down slowly, and feed your bed for years and years.
On top of the upside down sod I replaced all of the soil that I removed from the bottom of the bed and added some more compost and topped it all with wood chips.
The beds should be planted as soon as you are finished building them as they are full of active decomposition and nitrogen is free to be used immediately by the plants you put on top. Water it all really well during each phase of building so that there are no air pockets left between the parts of the hugel bed. Basically you are composting in place in both the bottom and top of the bed, and if you want to continue to add fertility you can always continue to dig in or add compost as it is available, or just pull away the mulch and put the compost down and re cover it with mulch again.
The material breaking down in the middle of the beds and bottom, will provide your plants with nutrients for many many years, and these beds are wonderful for plants that have high nutrient
requirements. It is also a good way to get rid of tree trunks, brush, leaves, hay, or anything you have left over on your property that you have no use for.
The first year I planted these beds with annual vegetables and herbs and got a huge harvest.
The second year I planted the beds with strawberries, blackberries (thornless), kiwi vines and grape vines as well as some goji berries, comfrey, parsley and other perennial herbs. Also at the far end to the right of the bed I planted a baby Giant Breda Medlar tree, with the white trunk guard around it, and it has had a great harvest the past two years.
Above is another smaller hugel bed that I built 3 years ago. This one is a special bed I designed for Blueberry plants, which require acid soil. The branches that I put in the bottom of the hole under this bed are evergreen boughs, to provide acidity. I also filled the soil with acid type mulches, coffee grounds, peat moss, etc and planted 7 blueberry bushes in this bed. The blueberries have had a small harvest for the past 3 years now.
The fruit you see above that is red, is unripe blackberries, behind them climbing the arbor are kiwi vines and grapevines, and the ground cover is strawberries.
Grapevines had a huge harvest this past year, unfortunately some were not as ordered (seedless), which was a disappointment, but they were nevertheless delicious.
This is a photograph of the baby fruits of the Medlar tree last year, it is very happy in it's hugel bed.
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