hugelkultur - gardening without irrigation

[paul wheaton]

This is a short video from a workshop two weeks ago. The general idea is that if you build your raised bed with a lot of wood in it, you should be able to go the whole summer without irrigating or fertilizing.

http://www.youtube.com/paulwheaton12#p/u/0/sp_IObIkInQ

[gardengirl72]

Thanks for posting the link. seems like a great idea. Did they plant anything this year? What plants will do well? Do you have to water the first year? Thanks again.

[paul wheaton]

The first year will be kinda lame since the wood doesn't have water stored in it yet, and it will tie up nutrients in order to do the composting thing. So you will need to treat it like a regular raised bed. The only perk the first year is the extended season due to the extra heat from the compost.

For the second year and beyond, you don't get much heat anymore, but you do get the perks of not having to irrigate or fertilize.

Any plants will do well if they are polyculture friendly. But deep rooted plants do the best.

I didn't stick around for the planting, but I do hope to stop by periodically and see how it is doing.

[gardengirl72]

Please do and post some images as well. Thanks

[paul wheaton]

So here is a pic from my hugelkultur article (http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/) I wrote about five years ago - this is more of a farming scale:

http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/bed_d.jpg

And here is a pic from a more urban scale hugelkultur I posted about here (http://www.permies.com/bb/index.php?topic=17.msg24885#msg24885):

http://www.permies.com/permaculture-images/17_829/urban_hugelkultur_1.jpg

I think this pic might be a year later with volunteer potatoes - you can see I'm combining a bit of the ruth stout method:

http://www.permies.com/permaculture-images/17_831/urban_hugelkultur_3.jpg

[paul wheaton]

A friend saw the video from two days ago and emailed me to say that he
made something like that ten years ago. And here is a video of his
ten year old hugelkultur bed:

http://www.youtube.com/paulwheaton12#p/u/0/lWaEEdB6GZM