Description of Challenge
Soil impoverishment and erosion, climate change, decrease of the biodiversity…The linear industrial agricultural methods are responsible for a lot of issues our society faces. We need alternative agriculture methods to enrich the soil back and to make the life it contains flourish instead of destroying it."All the world's problems can be solved in a garden." - Geoff Lawton
Solution
Hügelkultur is making raised garden beds made of and covered with organic material for cropping. It has several advantages: The first few years, the composting process will slightly warm your soil giving you a slightly longer growing season. The organic material will also shrinks inside the garden beds, making more tiny air so there is no need for tilling. As the years pass, the organic material keeps nutrient excess from passing into the ground water and refeeds that to the garden plants later: That makes the soil of the raised garden bed incredibly rich and loaded with soil life. Besides, it holds a lot of water so hugelkultur can be part of a system for growing garden crops in dry areas with few – or no – irrigation. Passing from 2D to 3D increases the cropping surface as well and enables different micro-climats in the garden bed so it is possible to have more diversity. Last but not least, it allows to avoid bending down…
