Building a Dryland Hugelkultur: Water-Wise Gardening for Arid Climates

High Desert Permaculture: Implementing Hugelkultur at Stony Oasis Farms

It was a beautiful early spring day up on Stony Oasis Farms....leaves just budding out on all the trees I have planted in my food forest. I cannot express how much I am looking forward to living there...it is my personal Oasis!

This is the second Dryland Hugelkultur I have built up on Stony Oasis farms, with many more to follow. You can see the big pile of brush in the image above....all that brush will end up pushed down into the ditch (I used the excavator for that) I am digging then burned to create both ash, and bio-char.

I then start adding amendments, and soil back into the ditch. here is the brush burning...creating the bio char... it is amazing how much brush you can burn and still not take up much room.

I actually forgot about adding the natural compost I can get up there. You can read about that over on Just Cannabis Seed. JCS is how I generate funds to do everything I will be doing up there. Here is that link, which will open in a new tab....Guerrilla Composting Onsite: The No-Turn Guerrilla Method.

Growing Cannabis in a Dry-Land Hugelkultur

I will be utilizing this particular planting bed to grow 15 cannabis plants this summer. I have grown cannabis for over 50 years, and have grown many 15 foot tall monster cannabis plants in my day. I am curious just how big I can get these plants to grow up there with it's shorter growing season.

Making cannabis plants get big is all about pushing them with fertilizers during the veg window of growth. Although, even after the onset of flowering they can get a few feet taller. This will be a seeded grow, so the flowers will not attain the size that a sensemillia (seedless cannabis flowers) grow could generate. But, I still think they will be impressive, and they will produce many thousands of seeds...all F1's.

Amending the Dryland Hugelkultur

I am all about creating a planting bed which will not only feed whatever plants I plant in it, but also continue to feed plants for years to come. Here are some of the amendments I have added to this bed...

Ammendments I used in this dryland hugelkultur...

• Kelp Meal (micro nutrients)
• Bone Meal (potassium)
• Blood Meal (nitrogen)
• Dolimate Lime (sweeten the mountain soil just a bit)
• Organic Plus Potting Soil (cheap, but good)
• Natural compost I will collect and use in each planting hole
• Ash from burning brush in the ditch
• Bio-Char created when I burned the brush
• Unburned woody debris (slowly releases nutrients, and holds water)

I actually forgot to add my natural compost I referred to above, but no worries I will add a five gallon bucket to each planting hole. I expect these cannabis plants to really respond, and if they are slow to do so, I will simply feed them more nutrients when I water them. I expect when they are mature their roots will extend all the way to the bedrock...which is about 4 feet down. And with the water I pump out at the top of the hill running down the bedrock, they will actually not need to be watered at all.

You can see the pots on the left above that I have grown these plants in, and you can see Emma approves of my planting technique.

These plant will be about 2 months old when I put them out, and this is a way to get plants to get much bigger during their time growing vegatively. I wrote an article over on JCS sharing this technique as well as others for those who want to grow monster cannabis plants, you can read about that here, and again it will open in a new tab....How to Grow 10lb Cannabis Plants Off-Grid: The 2026 Super Soil & Dryland Hugelkultur Guide

And here...Grow A Ten Pound, Ten Foot Tall, Cannabis/Marijuana Plant

Conclusion

This is the second Hugelkultur I have build up there, and there will be many more to follow, I have an awesome customer who has decided to help me out up there by buying me many bare root fruit trees...thank you Christopher!!!

The next Hugelkultur I build will be for these trees. I expect the trees and any deep rooted plants to respond well to this technique, and I will share successes, and any failures right here on Stony Oasis.

Do you have any experience with this planting method? Have you ever built one and used it? Tell me about it! I love chatting about off-grid, permaculture topics.