Hugels in HOT Drylands

Hi Zach:

There's been a lot of discussion on permies about whether or not hugelkultur is really appropriate for hot drylands. Most of us living in these climates - with rainfall usually 3" - 15" per year and temps over 100 degrees for months and months on end - generally feel that aboveground hugels exacerbate our situation rather than ameliorate it because we are exposing more surface area to our extreme conditions. Plus anything "raised" tends to shed water as opposed to harvest it. Here in Phoenix we get around 7.5" annual rainfall but our evaporation rate is 94" per year. Yikes!

Some folks here, myself included, have experimented with beds where branches are buried underground and sunken beds are crafted on top. This seems to work fine but I honestly can't tell if it's holding any more moisture than a regular sunken water harvesting bed.

So what I'm wondering is if you or Sepp modify the traditional hugelkultur when you work in really hot, drylands? Am I missing something about traditional hugelkultur that would make it more applicable to my area? I've tried to get my mind around how to effectively use this technique in my climate but the only thing I come back to are the sunken bed hugels.

Phrustrated in Phoenix,
Jen

Hi Jennifer:

You are right on the money with your sunken hugelbeds, we do indeed make them as depressions in the ground when working in dry lands or with sandy soil. The wood attracts the moisture and stores it in the depression. Kind of a pot-hole garden with wood in the bottom to help retain the moisture. Have you done a side by side comparison with and without wood? I'd be very interested to hear the results of an experiment like that!

As I was just posting in another thread Hugelkultur is treated like a one size fits all solution and that is just not the case. Most of the places I visit with Sepp he does not recommend any Hugelkultur. Often times the landowner even wants Hugelkultur and Sepp says that it just doesn't make sense anywhere on their land. It's all about the resources that you have available and working with them to the best of your ability.

Zach - THANK YOU! I think I can sleep at night now

Have you done a side by side comparison with and without wood? I'd be very interested to hear the results of an experiment like that!

I haven't done a side-by-side growing the same crops. The wood was mostly under my urban orchard. In the 6 yrs since I've installed it - it's sunk about an inch a year. Now it's a tad too deep. Not sure I'd do that again with trees on the downslopes of the sunken "swale".

The way I see it there are two problems with putting wood in a sunken bed - they sink further - which might be ok for veggies but can be problematic for trees over time. The other thing is maintenance - what if you want to refresh the wood once it's rotted down? Again - it would work for annuals but not so much for perennials - unless I'm missing something.

And then there's the fact that I'm just plain lazy and digging even deeper sunken beds to bury wood is WORK, my friend!

Great points Jennifer,

Hugelkultur is often confused as a good system for growing trees, this is most certainly not the case. As the wood decomposes the tree roots will destabilize causing problems for the future. I've seen a lot of people that want to use Hugelkultur like swales but this is not how Sepp uses them. Hugelkulturs are for annuals and small perennials such as berry bushes etc. They can be used as a nursery space for trees but are not a long term tree growing system.

Zach Weiss wrote:Hugelkultur is often confused as a good system for growing trees, this is most certainly not the case. As the wood decomposes the tree roots will destabilize causing problems for the future. I've seen a lot of people that want to use Hugelkultur like swales but this is not how Sepp uses them. Hugelkulturs are for annuals and small perennials such as berry bushes etc. They can be used as a nursery space for trees but are not a long term tree growing system.

Zach - thank you again! I know so little about hugelkultur so this conversation is extremely informative. Thanks for clearing up some of these nagging issues for me - I very much appreciate it.

My place is far from a desert but In my observation of my aspen forest it seems that the trees create their own hugel over decades. The grasses and shrubs start things off, the trees slowly crawl into the area. As trees die they drop to the ground and decay. More trees and shrubs grow, trees drop and decay. My aspen forest is very old and the soil is really deep and dark.

My point is that maybe you could just continue to Hugel above ground once you have an underground hugel started and the plants are sinking in? Just keep adding logs to the pile?

Zach, did you see the pics of my place with the wood behind walls?
https://permies.com/t/37389/hugelkultur/Large-sunken-beds-building-stone#292253
I am a zone 11 mediterranean....
I would like to know more about the problems you talk about.

As the wood decomposes the tree roots will destabilize causing problems for the future.

I cannot have a real forest but I want to plant carrob and some others...
The rest of the place will be cereals for hens.

digging even deeper sunken beds to bury wood is WORK, my friend

!
hehe, I have put wood quite deep, as I use a caterpillar.
How deep, better say "how not tooo deep" should be buried the last wood?

The soil I have added has more clay, so great for moisture, and I can still graduate the quantity and depth of the pine logs.

Also, is it possible to bury some goat dung on top of the wood?

Miles,
I was thinking of how different the experience of decay is in a desert a few weeks back and took some pictures that I thought might be a good, visual example of some of the differences that happen here in the desert compared to other areas. It's kind of hard to believe until you see it, but when you do, I imagine it'll make it clearer why the whole forest decay thing doesn't work so well here, or at least, doesn't work with quite the same systems in place.

The first two pictures I took in an oak and pine forest, up around 6,000 feet in altitude, I believe, so this is cooler and gets more than twice the moisture than I get (30 inches compared to 12). I don't know the age of the forest, but I know it was already a recognizable forest over 130 years ago when it was named, so it's been around a while.

In the photo, you can see the soil is not dark at all under the natural mulch made by the trees and vegetation. Seriously, it's pale and it was also completely dry. The photo was taken about a month after the last rainfall in that area. And I should mention again - this is an area that gets MORE moisture than where I'm at.

Next picture is of a log that's been in the forest for years and years - and you'll note the distinct lack of breaking down, here. There's no fungus, no moss, no lichens, even. Just a little bark missing and big, dead, slowly desiccating tree corpse. They just don't rot here like they do in a wetter climate, you know?

The last picture was just a brief one to show the level of growth near our arroyos, including one naturally occurring 'hill' on the left of the picture that's makes basically an island in the middle of a small stream a few hours a day, during the monsoons. You'll be able to see one section of it with nothing growing on it. There was nothing but one scraggly weed that was still mostly to the side. Otherwise, everything grows in the valleys rather than the hills (I think I might have to put this photo in the next post.

Yeah - last picture of the hillock in the middle of an arroyo, one of the wettest places near my home. On the left of the picture is the hillock, in the middle is the tree growing in the small valley formed behind the hillock.

I have spoken with several people who have tried hugelkultur in arid hot drylands with poor results. Yet, the same people get amazing results when they bury a lot of organic matter under the ground. we locally call it a 'sponge' or 'organic sponge'. It makes sense to me because 'hugel' originally referenced a hill. It is basically the same thing of putting organic material into the ground.

Hot arid drylands
hugelkultur -above ground hill loaded with wood and organic material covered with dirt - doesn't work well
organic sponge -sunken pit loaded with wood and organic material covered with dirt - works well

Out of simple curiosity and enthusiasm, I decided to make a hugelkultur outside of my yard, a couple months ago. It's all stone and no soil, almost entirely. Only the hardiest plants grow here. I'm on the edge (area) of the Judea desert.

The summer here is super harsh (not even a cloud), and I am not irrigating the hugelkultur. However, two sturdy cucumber plants seem to survived. Other plants died on it, but those two might have managed to push their roots below the wood pile, and keep alive.

If they're still alive so far, my bet is that they will survive the summer, and give [small] fruit. I'll keep an eye on them.

I shared pics on my blog, including other experiments:
http://www.assafkoss.com/2014/06/hugelkultur-plant-friends.html

Assaf - I love that you are experimenting with this! I hope you keep lots of notes and pictures as the summer progresses. I would definitely save the seeds of those cucumber plants! Are they Armenian cucumbers (at least that's what we call them here) - they seem to be the hardiest in hot, dry areas.

I wonder too, if more things would survive if you used a sunken hugel bed instead of the more traditional hugel mound?

I also understand completely about "no clouds in the sky". When I lived in Somalia, it rained twice in the two years we were there. And one of those times it rained on our neighbor's property and not ours. So really, we got one rain event in two years. Such is the way of the desert.

Jennifer Wadsworth wrote:Assaf - I love that you are experimenting with this! I hope you keep lots of notes and pictures as the summer progresses. I would definitely save the seeds of those cucumber plants! Are they Armenian cucumbers (at least that's what we call them here) - they seem to be the hardiest in hot, dry areas.

I wonder too, if more things would survive if you used a sunken hugel bed instead of the more traditional hugel mound?

Thanks, Jennifer. I don't know that they are Armenian or otherwise. It's just the seed packet that I got in my local gardening shop. I'm sure it's some locally favored variety, considering our special conditions.

The ground here is rocks and lime, I think. Anyhow, it's not digging-friendly, at all. Even with a pickaxe, it would be a menace; and I've tried before. So, that's not a viable option, without some heavy machinery.

Here's a picture of my two year old hugelkulture after two years of drought in California. Any questions? The only green part is the bermuda in the background growing over the septic tank which I'm trying to kill with a board of plywood, as you can see. There is a little green at the depression of the horseshoe shaped bed, but that is in direct opposition to the idea. It basically now serves as an infiltration basin for the middle.

So here in Denver, an experience permaculture practitioner is planting trees in a hugelmulch. Given Zach's comment earlier, about trees not growing in hugelkultures, I wonder what he would think about that? The thread is in the hugelkulture forum.

Great thread! I am a member of the Transition Joshua Tree Permaculture Team. We are doing a lot of experimentation with Hugels in our Mojave desert region. So far, absolutely, the sunken Hugel bed seems the way to go. One member has had very good success growing an annual vegetable garden on his. Keeping the atmosphere moist is a real struggle here for vegetable growing so he has constructed a mini greenhouse cover over it that can be easily raised and lowered. He is a long time desert gardner and is now convinced that sunken Hugels are a great advantage. I have adapted the idea and made a sunken hugel swale that is solely for grey water capture from my kitchen sink. I will be growing a patch of Prickly Pear cactus on the down slope berm of the swale. It is also placed just a bit away from the drip line of a large pine tree that gets very stressed in the summer. I am hoping that it will provide a bit of moisture relief for it as well. I don't know yet if it will work out but I'm hopeful. Here in the desert, we stack functions like crazy.

You can have a hugelkultur (raised garden without walls/berm) right next to a sunken hugelkultur (humus storage ditch in Sepp's words). Even if nothing grows on the berm, it protects the humus storage ditch from wind.

Mira Morse wrote:You can have a hugelkultur (raised garden without walls/berm) right next to a sunken hugelkultur (humus storage ditch in Sepp's words). Even if nothing grows on the berm, it protects the humus storage ditch from wind.

Mira that's probably an excellent solution for a lot of "high and dry" situations where you get significant wind. Thanks!

Jeff Rash,
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good new topic