Hugelkultur Progress (Australia)

My Hugelkultur is going strong twelve months on (poetically put, I might add).

Winter has kicked in later than usual. Yesterday I took my bike for a ride along the Merri Creek and around to a Community Garden in Brunswick and I checked out a few of the basil plants in the shared garden and they were well and truly 'kaput' - 'finito'.

The man diligently planting up his plot said they had died about a month earlier. Now what a proud moment that was for me.  My basil WINS!

It's winter in Melbourne and the basil on the Hugelkultur is hanging in there.  I gave some to my friend last week when he took me out for my birthday and we enjoyed the basil from the same clump in a salad last night. When I planted it up I read online - having a Hugel Kultur 'might' prolong the growing season and yes, I'm very glad to say my Hugelkultur is living proof today that the growing media MUST BE warmer as my basil is still growing (well wilting a bit under the 8 degree conditions). The other benefit about a hugelkultur is that because it's a raised planting bed - there is more tilt towards the sunlight than the lower plants get.

See the comparison photos. The Endive recently planted in pots and in the Hugelkultur. The Endive in the Hugelkultur is growing two or three times as fast.

There is also the wicking bed (wicker bed?) effect whereby I now rarely have to water it. These mounds are a brilliant invention emanating from Eastern Europe I believe.  I must admit the vegie plants were getting established over the summer and they did require the usual daily watering but since Autumn I've rarely watered the HK.   The lettuces didn't do so well, but then a lot of them got 'ET' by the possums.

What people may not have grasped is the Hugelkultur is a planting mound built up on rotting wood, decomposing branches and twigs, leaves, compost, soil - as long as the materials are not alleopathic (like Eucalyptus, black walnut) and provided they are fully dead - otherwise they will sprout through the mound.

One of the disadvantages is the erosion. As I have a strained wrist - too many years of landscaping and home maintenance - I have only topped it up with compost from time to time so it has sunken down a bit. Next one which I will build with HELP will have more straw added to maintain the height.

Ideally you need two people to build it!

Hugelkulturs RULE!   They are a tree recycler,  carbon sequestration media, self-watering and give plants a longer time for harvesting.  Plus they are great if you have a small garden because you build up not just out.

Today we will deal with the letter 'W'

UK is facing its most diabolical drought in many decades. Sent a tweet just now on this topic.

Wicker beds are just one way of dealing with drought, as the technique actually encourages a kind of reverse absorption, going against gravity, I believe.  Wicker beds are something to be researched as I personally have never dealt with them so the Sustainable Gardening Australia website is one to look up.

But on another 'w' topic, I got a call from one of the councils about weeds, and they said they are having more difficulty with chilean needle grass, as this one is harder to detect than the one I have been banging on about ad nauseum.  (Us greenies do get a bit nauseatingly repetitive, don't we!)

So just to bore the reader a tad more, the next weed I will raise is the very lofty and weedy Desert ash (Fraxinus angustifolia subsp.angustifolia).  Now I only realised at the beginning of my course a couple of years back that this is a naturalised envrionmental weed.  It pops up all over my area, and it has a habit of popping up just next to a fence, or a house and if it gets tall enough it will start to uproot your house.  Thrice it has popped up in very awkward positions around  my home.  The trouble is it can grow to literally a height of a 3 storey building, it grows really quickly in all the rain we've been having, and it involves so much maintenance.   The one on my boundary with the neighbours is lifting up the concrete path next to the fence.  I am happy my neighbours love it as it gives them tonnes of shade on the north western side. However, for me it's not so lovely.

I will attach a photo when next it is light!  Perhaps one of my next topics will be non-weedy trees, that don't take so much maintenance.

On another note, the thing I really love about summer is the sound of the cicadas, or is it crickets.  Anyway they make a great noise that lulls you off to sleep.

From this ...

To this !