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Is Hugelkulture a solution to poor soil quality?

 
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I am hoping to buy some land, primarily for a business but eventually I'll be moving on site with an aim of being as off-grid as possible.

The soil here in my Province is very acidic, and many of the sites I've looked at have pretty poor soil quality. Very stoney/gravely with little depth. I've been reading about Hugelkulture and I'm curious if this will allow me to grow the vast majority of my food despite the soil conditions.

In particular in concerned with if that acid condition will permeate up into the Hugelkulture through the water, and damage the plants.

Edit: No autocorrect, soul and soil are not the same thing. Lol
 
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Compost is a good ph buffer & it seems the rains will tend to keep the acidity from climbing upward toward the plants. Wood ash will help neutralize the soil. I think if you build a fairly tall hugelbed & add some good topsoil & compost to start with it will be possible to grow almost anything that will grow in your climate.

Not much will grow in gravel or rocks but if you can remove most of those even poor soil will eventually become enriched by the decomposing wood.
 
Andrew Pritchard
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Fortunately the local municipalities sell compost pretty cheap - it's the waste from people's green bins from the cities. The space I'm considering hasn't been managed properly for years, so there are plenty of dead standing trees I can safely remove for Hugelbeds and make my own charcoal/ash. I might consider some crush limestone in the bottom of the bed, to help prevent the acidity from rising up through the hugel. The stoney ground won't matter so much if I'm using a hugel, since I'm essentially building a raised bed.

The elevation is quite high at the site I'm considering, so I'm hoping that the hugels and trees can also help prevent too much wind damage from occuring. Without doing any kind of other studies though I don't actually know what the wind is actually like up there. On the plus side - if there is higher winds up there I can get power from wind turbines
 
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Hugels are good.  You may want to also consider raised beds ..... say 2 feet or more deep.  It will allow for building up the soil and provide some wind protection. A 4x8 ft bed is easy to cover to gain some growing time as well.  
 
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Hi Andrew,

Rotting wood is going to make a good growing medium.  Since you are talking about hugelkulture I assume that you are thinking about a raised bed, correct?  That raised bed should elevate you above the acidic ground and the decaying wood should nicely buffer any acidity you might run into.

As has already been mentioned, wood ashes can partially reverse acidity and burying woods can give more of a buffer.

Good luck!

Eric
 
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And as Eric will also tell you, if you can get wood chips or straw and make beds with wine cap mushrooms, you can build some good soil quickly.
 
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