Hügelkultur Mistakes

Table of Contents:

Water Retention & Drainage
Nitrogen Lockup
Pests & Disease
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If you're getting into hügelkultur, you'll want to avoid these common hügelkultur mistakes to ensure success in your garden.

The following mistakes and problems are some of the most common issues that gardeners run into while attempting hügelkultur.

hugelkultur raised bed gardens 4 wooden beds with fence and plants growing — Hügelkultur raised beds were filled with logs, branches, sticks, cardboard, coffee grounds, and food scraps.

If you learn from these, you can avoid most pitfalls and save yourself time and frustration as you learn how to make this resourceful method work for you on your land.

Water Retention & Drainage

One of the most common issues with hügelkultur is water retention

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Carbonaceous material can absorb a lot of water, especially wood chips.

Keep in mind here that hügelkultur is essentially a compost pile beneath your plants, and that compost is generally not watered as much as garden plots because they can easily become too bioactive.

If you're going to be decomposing big chunky material under your plants, it's important to make sure your drainage is adequate and things aren't becoming anaerobic.

Just like a compost pile, too much water can mean too much bioactivity - evidenced by pests and smells.

Some of the best options here are open-bottom planters and raised beds, and adding sand, perlite, or rock dust to help improve the drainage. Bonus points for the minerals which sand and rock dusts add - these will help your hügelkultur beds or plots to thrive for many years to come.

Be especially mindful if you're in a very wet climate to add more of these drainage-improving grit / mineral additions to really help break up the absorbant carbon aggregates.

Nitrogen Lockup

Another issue with hügelkultur is the potential for the woody carbonaceous material to lock up nitrogen from the soil. This is temporary, but can cause issues for years if there is not enough nitrogen to counteract this.

The thing to remember here is simply that carbon needs to be balanced out with nitrogen. Filling a bed or plot with logs, branches, wood chips, and cardboard makes for a very carbon-heavy bed.

This carbon must be counteracted with some nitrogen.

You do not need nearly as much nitrogen by volume as carbon, but adding coffee grounds, grass clippings, green leaves, food waste, tea leaves, hedge trimmings, and other fresh forms of nitrogen will be required to counterbalance the carbon.

If you don't have enough nitrogenous material available, a bag of alfalfa meal is a great inexpensive source you can buy.