Hugelkultur for a drought resistant garden
Article by Stefan Burns - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!
Hügelkultur is a regenerative organic permaculture technique where a pile of wood debris and compostable plant materials is buried into and capped with soil. As the wood and plant matter decomposes, these materials hold water and slowly amend into the soil. Deeply burying logs, wood, leaves, grasses, native mushrooms, and food scraps in this way creates fungal, soil microbiome, and insect communities, improving soul fertility. Once everything is decomposed enough, vigorous plant growth can then occur. Depending on the layer of soil used to cap a hügelkultur mound, and how deeply it was initially buried, it can be planted upon immediately. The plants, soil microbiome, mycelium networks, and critters like worms are provided a large source of nutrients and energy stored in the plant materials, and over time a hügelkultur mound becomes a rich thriving community.
The 4 layers of a Hugelkultur mound.
How to create a hügelkultur mound
First dig a hole 0.5 - 2 meters deep
Add the logs or natural wood scraps to the hole, placing the largest materials at the bottom and the lightest and smallest pieces to the top.
Add leaves, weeds, and grasses to the pile. Mushrooms found in the local ecosystem can also be added at this point, and/or a fungal mychorrizal inoculant can be used.
Cap and mound with dirt. The pile will settle with time so mounding is recommended.
Timing - when to install
Hügelkultur mounds act as water sponges, and during the rainy months decomposition accelerates as the wood fibers and other organics hold onto water in their cellular structures. For this reason, the best time to install a hügelkultur mound would be at the end of the dry season, typically at the end of summer harvest. When created during the end of the dry season, all the rainfall received over the coming months loads the hügelkultur with water and accelerates the decomposition and soil amendment process. Any old and dead plants, as well as weeds and leaves, can be added to the pile on top of the logs/wood. By doing this plant productivity and nutrients originally extracted and refined from the soil can be reincorporated into the soil in more complex forms. Any plants that went to seed, for example kale plants, which are then added to the pile add nutrition and any seeds that naturally sprout and grow in the pile at the end of the wet season aerate the soil and potentially require little to zero input or work until they are themselves ready to harvest. The decomposition and soil building process can be improved with the addition of a mycorrhizal inoculant. Depending on the size of the hügelkultur being created, adding one or more 2 lb bags of the inoculant can make a huge difference in how quickly everything breaks down.
Done properly, Hügelkultur creates living soil and creates a self-sustaining and propagating ecosystem, requiring less work in the long run while creating more output.
With the mounds and surrounding soils loaded with water during wet season, any plants which can grow roots deep enough into the mound will the rewarded with ample water and easily accessible organic matter. Watering requirements can go down, and with development year-round drought-resistant gardens can be established using hügelkultur.
New Hugelkultur mound freshly capped. Installed at the end of the wet season, by the start of the next dry season 12 months later, this area will be the ideal place to plant vigorously growing crops like squash, potatoes, or a fruit bearing tree.
Think of Water
Without water, no garden or food forest can survive. The soil of the land, whether it is sandy, silty, or clay, makes a big difference in how well water will be absorbed rather than drain away. The soils with the best ability to hold water are those made soft and loamy from a high percentage of organic components. Hügelkultur can terraform an area and create a thriving ecosystem in an area typically barren. It’s a method popular in desert areas, where water might come down quickly as rain or snow, and then most is captured into the hügelkultur mounds. As mounds develop and grow in age, new mounds can be placed on top of them, and the cycle continues, further enriching the soil.
If a hügelkultur mound is installed at the end of the wet season, then during the dry season it will pull moisture to it. This can stress the plants in the nearby area, which eventually will grow roots to the hügelkultur pile to access this water. So if installing a hügelkultur mound in the spring for example, make sure to thoroughly soak the wood and compostable before capping with soil in order to minimize this moisture wicking effect. Installing these mounds at the end of the dry season is ideal, but if made at the end of the wet season when the soil is more workable, preloading the mound with water can improve the drought resilience of your garden or permaculture effort. In effect there is never a bad time to install a hügelkultur mound.
Hugelkultur for Carbon Sequestration
Performing hugelkultur is an excellent way to sequester carbon into the soil. With mass amounts of carbon already having been emitted anthropogenically, and with ever more being released, we need to increase our carbon sequestration efforts individually, as a community, and collectively as a society. Rising temperatures will make widespread hugelkultur a must as water scarcity increases.
Watch the video below to learn more about anthropogenic carbon emissions and methods for how we can sequester carbon.