Welcome to my blog, where I document my experiments and successes with Hugelkultur:
- practical advice and examples,
- gardening tips and tricks for cool climates,
- and the life-cycle of a successful working garden from one year to the next
I love hugelkultur and try to educate everyone I meet on the techniques and benefits.
I’ve had amazing success and the best veggie garden I’ve ever built.
In two years:
- my fruit trees are strong and healthy, tripling their trunk width and growing to almost three meters (even with judicious pruning),
- I’ve had an abundance of vegetables, including difficult cold climate varieties such as eggplants and capsicums.
- I use two thirds of the recommended water, and water each hugel only once a week.
I came across the concept of Hugelkultur when I was researching water efficient raised garden beds. I’d started off with the concept of wicking beds, but stumbled onto Hugelkultur on a permaculture forum. Everything I read about Hugelkultur was both exciting and sensible, and I’ve been a fan ever since.
In a water conscious culture like Australia, I believe that Hugelkultur is the answer to effective and efficient water saving gardens.
My garden at a glance
My garden is located in a cool temperate zone, so most of the advice I give is relevant to areas that have low humidity, frost, the relevant number of chill days for garlic, cherries, etc., and an annual dump of snow.
We get decent rainfall, and warm summer temperatures, but we get frosts, snow, have terrible sandy soil, and too many kangaroos.
- Cool climate zone 9b (subtropical highland)
- Avg Frost days per year, and 5 snow days
- Avg x warm days per year (days over x C)
- Avg x cold days (below x C)
- 1000mm of average rainfall
- Poor, well drained, sandy soil
Philosophies and principles
I use the following principles in my gardening.
- Hugelkultur
- Permaculture
- Water efficiency
- Composting, worms, and Bokashi
Elsewhere on this site: