worm35

How to 
Grow Your Own Hugelberries

The pictures below chronicle the growth and yield of my six hugleberry test beds, beginning in the spring of 2013. The beds were made in August of 2012, as explained in the book.

This picture, taken on April 18, isn't too impressive. I have raked off the light layer of old straw that was over the beds all winter. 

This picture was taken on May 29th. All the hugelberry plants survived the winter and are growing very well. I have cultivated the soil around the tire beds three times since April 18 using my Planet Whizbang wheel hoe, and inside the beds using my Whizbang Pocket Cultivator. Blossoms are beginning to form and it is critically important that some straw mulch be spread around the plants. 

Here is a close-up view (click to see an enlarged picture) of the hugelberries before mulching with straw.

I bought a single bale of straw at a garden center. It cost me NINE DOLLARS! I used a little more than half the bale to mulch the six hugel-beds. 

Here are some hugelberry flowers. With the mulch in place, I'm ready for berries.

Hugleberries on June 18 
( a couple weeks after mulching)

Here's a beautiful hugleberry on June 21. I have not picked any of the berries yet. My plan is to pick the ripest ones tomorrow morning. 

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So on the morning of June 22, I eagerly headed out to my hugleberry beds, as you can see them above (click the picture and you'll better see the clusters of green berries, with a little bit of red). But when I took a closer look, this is what I discovered...
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AHHHHHHHHHH!  Something ate one of my choicest berries! The something ate more than one! At the peak of ripeness, the evening before I was to pick and enjoy the berries, some sort of critter feasted on them. Now that's discouraging!!!

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Another mostly-eaten hugleberry, as I found it. I suspect it was chipmunks. In years past, I've seen chipmunks carry whole berries out of my strawberry beds. But these berries were probably too big to carry away.

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The good news is that the thieving rodents didn't eat all the ripe berries. There were still a few left, like the one above.

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Here are some of the nicest hugelberries (that the chipmunks left me) from my first picking.

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The berries were lovely on the inside too.

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Reflections 
On My First Year 
Of Growing Hugelberries
(22 June 2013)

Except for the chipmunks eating some of my choicest fruit, I am very pleased with my hugelberry experiment. I did a Brix test on the berries pictured above and it was 8.5%. That's nothing to brag about (just a little better than average—see page 121 of the book), but I think the Brix will improve as the minerals I added to the garden (see page 113 of the book) become better incorporated into the soil in the years ahead. Brix aside, the berries tasted great.

The largeness of the berries is, I suspect, due more to E.P. Roe's single plant system (page 49) and the fact that I planted the beds in August. As Roe states on page 57: "This tendency to produce very large fruit is characteristic of young plants set out in summer."

I can tell you that I never once watered the beds after planting the rooted runners last August. The beauty of the hugelkultur concept is that the woody debris holds moisture. But we've had a very wet spring, so this year wasn't a good test of the hugelkultur concept.

As for how many berries can be harvested from just six hugelberry beds, I don't suppose it'll be enough to satisfy my family's love of all-things-strawberry for a whole year. Not even close. But this experiment is, nevertheless, instructive and inspiring. If you have a small space and just want to grow some strawberries as a seasonal treat, hugelberry tire beds, combined with E.P. Roe's single plant growing system, are the way to go. No doubt about it.

When the plants have stopped bearing, I will rake away the straw, shallow-cultivate the soil to keep weeds in check, and keep most of the runners picked as they form. I may, however, let enough runners root to supply a few more hugelberry beds for next year. 

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JUNE 29 UPDATE: My six little tire beds have been cranking out hugelberries for seven days now. It will be fun to see how many days I will be able to pick berries. The 2-quart bowl above shows the ripe berries I picked on the morning of the 7th day. The berries are still mostly of a large size. And there are lots of berries developing. Unfortunately, the weather has been very wet here for many days and that affects the ripening process, so the yield, as good as it is (for such a small plot), is probably less that it would be under optimum conditions.

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JULY 14 UPDATE: I picked hugelberries every morning from June 22 to July 7 (16 days). After the 7th, there were still berries to pick but they were sparse. For the 16-day period I picked from one to three quarts of berries a day. I wish I had kept track of the total pounds. Suffice it to say that it was a LOT of berries from a small space. This hugel-experiment has, in my opinion, been a great success.

In keeping with E.P. Roe's strawberry-growing advice, today (July 14) I removed the straw mulch, cultivated the soil around the tire beds, and removed all runners except for a dozen that I want to use to make 4 more hugelberry beds (in August). I've decided to put three plants in each of the new beds, instead of four. 

In the picture above (click to see a larger view) you can see thin wood marker stakes by each runner that I want to keep for later transplanting. All other runners that the parent plants send out will be removed. I remove them by giving them a sharp pull—they snap right off at the base of the plant.

I'd like to point out that the low-rider tire beds shown above are spaced apart 10" in the rows and the rows have 2' of soil between the beds. That spacing has worked out very well. It allows for access all around the beds to stand and work. Each bed becomes something of a strawberry bush. 

The picture above shows a runner that I have pressed into the soil outside the hugel-bed. It will be dug up and transplanted into its own tire bed next month.

"Hugel-Mass" For 
Hugelberry Tire Beds