Hugelkultur Kitchen Garden raised bed no water, 1 year on, a great success for self sufficiency no need to water in a drought!

Hugelkultur , the best way i have found to grow food in low water areas

I have always liked researching and trying different ways of growing things and I have planned to try this for about 15 years, so in 2023 I decided it was time to have a go due to the water table dropping so quickly and lack of rain here in Bulgaria.

Dogs think Hugelkultur is great as well and join in with the digging and sleep right in the way, Rufus loves all dug soil..

This is a traditional method of growing dating back hundreds or more years in Eastern Europe, and Germany but was first made popular in a German book in 1962 by Herman Andrä  the term means hill or mound growing, more exactly ,the beds are mounded up with old wood and things like that inside to allow low water use due to worm activity bringing water upwards

 I had a pile of semi rotted firewood of a few types Oak, Acacia, Beach wood I had chopped from plums and cherry, branches from years of pruning roses fruit trees blackberries etc

First I picked an area that nothing grows, a large plum tree sucks the water from the ground here,

I dug a trench about 750mm deep and filled with layers of wood then smaller sticks and leaves and green weeds from the garden to fill the gaps, a layer of soil , then more wood and weeds , every few layers i added a watering can of water sprinkled over it to help it start rotting

I kept piling it up until the trench was filled and mounded up about 300mm above ground level making it about a meter deep in the center of the mounded trench bed.

After a week or two , I planted s few pot grown tomato plants and cucumber plants in it. at the center of the mound, i only planed a few as it needed testing , and it takes a year or so for the ecosystem within to start working correctly 

Once the plants were in the bed I watered for the first week with about 100ml per couple of days to allow the roots to spread as they established themselves

After about 2 weeks the plants had no water and I had massive crops of tomatoes from them , other tomatoes planted near by with nothing but flat standard soil, needed watering every day to prevent wilting , the Hugelkultur bed needed no watering all year and had a bigger crop per plant.

Last year (2023) we had almost no rain from April until December so it was a good test for growing in arid conditions, 

This year I am building more areas of Hugelkultur as it worked so well.

And a video of  Lucy the Wolf Dog....