New Video: Succession Planting & Biodiversity

As an Amazon Associate, GrowJourney earns from qualifying purchases. Read more: terms of service.

A video tour of a garden hugelkultur bed showing seasonal succession planting

It’s helpful to see things in action in addition to reading about them on paper (or screen). We talk a lot about hugelkultur, succession planting, and biodiversity in our educational materials, so we thought it would be helpful to show you all three of those things at work in one of our garden beds.

We hope you enjoy this quick 7 minute video tour of a new huglekultur bed in our garden!

Definitions:

What is hugelkultur?

“Hugelkultur” is a Germanic word meaning “hill culture.” Hugelkultur is an ancient Germanic practice for building biological soil fertility utilizing decomposing logs, compost, and other decomposing organic materials.

To create a hugelkultur bed, you mound up layers of decomposing wood, compost, and soil, thereby creating a garden bed that will maintain water and fertility for many years.

What is succession planting?

There are different definitions and methods of succession planting, but what we’re referring to here is planting multiple plant species together that mature and/or produce a harvest in different seasons of the year so as to provide continual harvests from the same garden bed/s.

Instead of having large time windows where a garden bed isn’t producing food, succession planting allows for continual harvests.

What is biodiversity?

Biodiversity is the broad variety of species inhabiting an ecosystem. Biodiversity in a garden system is the intentional interplanting of multiple species to produce beneficial results.

For instance, biodiversity helps gardeners reduce pest & disease pressure, get larger yields, enjoy diversified crop production, etc.

If you have questions about anything in this video, please ask away in the comments below!