Making a Hügelkultur Mound in my Permaculture Garden

After a sudden shift of priorities in my life, I rediscovered my passion for gardening and I've also decided to account my thoughts and plans about it into words. Today's the same, it was around 2 o'clock in the afternoon when we went to our 'Garden', the weather is warm and sunny... a perfect day to work under the shade of tropical trees.

I've already upgraded two garden beds within my allocated space in the garden but I can't get over the fun of creating my own garden beds that embrace cost-free and organic approach, and so I planned to add another garden bed.

Having in mind the Hugelkultur design for my garden beds, I would need a lot of organic materials to fill the bed. However, there has been already a shortage of tree debris and plant materials within the property because my brother who had already used it in his garden beds.

So I looked on the other parts of the property to find something still usuable for my garden bed, and there are wild shrubs that can be harvested for stickings and some tree debris from the recent floods on a nearby brook.

Although it was quite a challenge to get there because the weeds are taller than me and the possible presence of snakes, I still managed to clear it slowly until I could progress towards the banks. The debris includes some coconut fruits and leaves, shrub branches and twigs, and other washed out plant materials.

My design for the Hügelkultur garden mounds was supposedly keyhole-shaped, however, there's a mango seedling at the center of my garden space, which I forgot while I was still brainstorming. Hence, the L-shaped bed, to accommodate the mango seedling.

A tree guild should also be established around the mango. The plants that should be incorporated in the guild has to be studied so that be listed in my 'gardening To-Dos' in the future.

In a few years, the garden space would be quite shady given that mango could grow quite tall but it would be better to grow plants that could thrive in shady environments. Also, growing fiddlehead ferns and mushrooms is a good choice for this type of garden.

So much about the future plans, for tomorrow's task, I might need to temporarily transfer the tree debris and sort it out before digging a shallow trench for the larger debris. The trench will capture water and would soak up the soil and plant materials to provide adequate moisture, so the mounds will just be watered occasionally.

For now, I expect for the Hügelkultur garden bed to more than half a meter tall but as time goes on, the organic materials underneath would decompost and so the shape might also change. However, this would all the more enrich the soil and provide nutrients for the plants. It would be quite healing for our nutrient-depleted 'Garden' soil.

I'm still starting... only begun devoting a fraction of my time for gardening a week ago but this made me learn to observe nature much closer than before. A lot of ideas filled my mind nowadays and this also made me looking forward in the future! A way to rewire a clogged mind, I must say.