months before you need to plant.
The aim is to produce a place that
within a year or two, the beds start
to generate an interior life of their
own, teeming with microbial life
and fungi. At the same time the
beds create their own small water
reservoir, cutting down the need to
water your plants as often as is normally necessary. The water within
the bed supplies minerals and sugars and the plants supply sugars
and phyto nutrients.
An experiment to compare the
growth of tomatoes and peppers
on Hugelkultur beds with the same
crops grown next to these beds in
the ground only using the same
aged manure in the soil, proved
that the Hugelkultur beds plants
were far superior to the others and
that they produced a never ending
supply of vegetables of excellent
quality and taste.
There are no hard a fast rules about
the size of your Hugelkultur beds.
A few added aspects are to systematically remove the top soil and
keep it one side of where you are
going to dig the bed. Then place
the next layer, the subsoil apart
from the top soil. When you have
built the bed with the wood
(carbon layers) and the greens
(nitrogen layers), then top with the
subsoil and finally the topsoil. Cover with mulch which will further
retain water closer to the surface of
the mound. One could also grow
ground cover over the mound to
act as mulch.
If you have rocks on the site, you
could utilise them to provide solar
thermal mass which is especially
useful in winter, by placing them
on the sunward side of your bed.
As the sun heats up the rocks during the course of the day, the heat
retained will warm the beds during
the cold night. Use as much of your
materials that you have on site. Assemble them all at the place where
you are going to build your bed, as
this is initially very labour intensive.
The payoff is in the long run, when
you may only need to water sparingly in the future. Remember to
water the deep beds with a slow
penetrating water flow. Pests will
be kept a bay by using companion
plants effectively on your mounds.
There is discussion as to what trees
are suitable for your Hugelkultur
beds. Eucalyptus, cedar and pine
trees are considered allopathic and
yet in USA farmers are getting most
success for berry growing on
Hugelkultur beds filled with cedar