Fruit trees on Hugelkultur raised garden beds?

Will it work to plant fruit trees on an HK bed? Would this be beneficial to the trees as it is to other plants or would it cause problems with their root systems as the bed settles over the years? Would it be better to plant trees next to the HK bed instead? If so, what types of plants would make sense to plant on the HK bed next to my trees?

plant mine at ground level into the bottom edges of the bed..myself..

So you figured there could be a problem with planting them on top? What did you plant on the top of the HK beds next to your trees? Thanks for your response!

I'm planting fruiting shrubs on mine but I'd be afraid of planting a tree on one because it might topple over when mature if it's only rooting in the hugelkultur and not in the actual ground.

Yeah that is my concern, too. Though I should clarify they are dwarf trees that I plan on pruning to 5' or so. Still too risky?

My shrubs are likely to be that tall, so to me, that seems safe.

I have started a threas already on this topic. The problem is that there are air pockets in the woody part of the huegelbed and roots don't like that at all.

Can you link your thread or give me the title? Thanks!

The roots of trees don't like the air pockets? I keep looking at this one diagram of an HK bed with a small tree on it...

https://d2q0qd5iz04n9u.cloudfront.net/_ssl/proxy.php/http/gallery.mailchimp.com/6bc31e24f7ef174a01e7f5915/images/hugelkultur_Wheaton.1.jpg

Trees should go between hugelculture beds to benefit from collected moisture and nutrients. The trees also benefit from the mounds acting as wind breaks, something you won't get planting trees on the top of the raised beds. Soft fruit like blue berries or raspberries can be planted into the bed at 45 degrees angle half way up the bed. This is mentioned in sepp holzers new book.

Okay, but I have just the one HK bed, not two to plant the trees between. Will the water and nutrient collection be the same simply planting the trees next to the bed? And what do I use the bed for then? I will end up stepping on it to harvest the fruit and it seems that wouldn't be good for most plants, compaction-wise.

Jaimee Gleisner wrote:Can you link your thread or give me the title? Thanks!

The roots of trees don't like the air pockets? I keep looking at this one diagram of an HK bed with a small tree on it...

https://d2q0qd5iz04n9u.cloudfront.net/_ssl/proxy.php/http/gallery.mailchimp.com/6bc31e24f7ef174a01e7f5915/images/hugelkultur_Wheaton.1.jpg

It looks to me like that tree is actually growing behind the hugelbeet, and not directly on it. I believe Sepp Holzer plants his trees adjacent.

I have been misunderstanding hugelkultur, I thought it was a good way to get a forest garden going because it encourages beneficial fungus and holds water. So planting trees adjacent is good, planting in/on is not? I was thinking elderberies and a mulberry, but maybe the elderberries should go on and the mulberry next-to? Hmmm. The bed I am working on won't be raised very high.

I wonder what else I should plant on this bed instead, have to rethink everything...

That picture was, I believe meant to be a conceptual representation, not a diagram of how to lay out an actual raised bed.

@ Matu Collins, I highly recommend you take a look at Sepp Holzer's three books. He details the use of raised beds with respect to incorporating them into a complete design/system.

Matu Collins wrote:I have been misunderstanding hugelkultur, I thought it was a good way to get a forest garden going because it encourages beneficial fungus and holds water.

This video shows a lot of trees or large shrubs growing in hugelkultur:

Yes, I had watched that video, too! And to me, the diagram I posted appears to have a tiny seedling planted on top of the bed that grows into a fruit tree with its roots coming out the bottom. Of course, it is open to interpretation and may not have been meant to be taken quite so literally... but I would like to make use of my HK bed to the benefit of my fruit trees and just am unsure which way to go. It seems the consensus is to plant next to the bed, but then I feel as though I've wasted the bed b/c I'll end up stepping on it to harvest my fruit. I will also end up using up another 4-5' of my open grass space (which I was leaving for my young children to play on) if I plant my trees next to the beds. I'm conflicted!

Jaimee Gleisner wrote: It seems the consensus is to plant next to the bed

I don't think it's a consensus. I think it would be fine to plant small trees in a hugelkultur. My concern is with poorly rooted tall trees toppling over.

Perhaps I should just go for it and see what happens! Thanks all!

In a dry climate you would want to plant low next to the bed. But in a wetter climate your tree would drown out there. In my location they plant fruit trees on berms to keep them from getting crown rot because the soil is inundated with water for so long in the spring.

Has anyone tried planting trees on the crown of these beds?

For certain short lived trees like dwarf peach, the south side of a well drained bed would seem the perfect spot in my cool climate. The wetter gullies are a great spot for plums that are meant to produce coppice wood along with fruit. If I were planting apples that I want to survive for 100 years, I'd put them on more solid ground and fertilize them with humus from spent beds.

some of my beds have perennial plants on them like currants, gooseberries, honeyberries, rhubarb, comfrey, etc..but I also use annuals on them as well. My new bed that I just put in has a plan for it of early plantings of greens and salad crops with peas, and later croppings of festivity OP corn, 2 kinds of bush beans, summer squash and more salad crops, collards and kale.

at each end of the new bed is going either 2 peach or two sweet cherry trees..probably the latter (I have 4 peach and 2 cherry trees coming, just deciding on what goes where). I ALWAYS put one comfrey root cutting under each of my fruit and nut trees.

Okay everyone, my fruit trees are arriving in a few days and I'm still torn on this issue. I really want to put them on my HK beds b/c I built the bed for them- it's already there and I don't have any other use for it in that location since I designated that spot for my fruit trees. Plus, with the high water table around here it seems better to get the roots off the ground a bit. But I am afraid of killing off my trees if they truly will not do well with air pockets. I called some horticulturists around my town and chatted with them about my plans. Several seemed to think all would be fine in mature HK beds, but not in new ones b/c of the air pockets still present in new beds. My beds were completed in mid November so they are almost 5 months old. While they have shrunken slightly, obviously not much has broken down yet, especially over the winter, so there are lots of air pockets still. So here's a question... how quickly will the tree roots grow into the bed? They have a good 7" of compost/soil to go through before hitting the wood/straw/leaf layer. Maybe it would take another year or two for them to really get into the air pockets and by then the bed will be more and more decomposed?

I really wish someone here has done this and could give me their experience!

Unfortunately I can't tell you about any long-term results, but last year I planted a couple of plum trees into a relatively low (2' above ground, maybe 8-12" deep dug-in portion) hugel. Comfrey in between them and some annuals around the side. Everything in that bed did *really* well last year, even during some really dry, hot stretches of weather -- I irrigated, but not as much as I would have expected given the weather. The beds were freshly built, but much of the wood was several years old and well weathered.

I'm planning to do something very similar this year with siberian pea shrub and goji. There's a mulberry going in too, but I have not yet decided if it will be on top of a hugel or in solid ground just downhill from a hugel.

I have about a 24' long hugelbed I also finished up in November of last year. I was a bit concerned about the fruit trees falling over also as I was planting standards..so I planted them up into the ENDS of the hugel bed..they are up about 2' from the bottom on the sloped end..and there are spots where logs are even sticking out (buggers)..after the heavy winter snows and rains..so I'll have to probably put on some more soil there.

I planted 2 standard peach trees, one a hale haven and one a red haven..they are just unbranched whips and when I planted them I made sure there was plenty of SOIL at the roots..so far I haven't gotten any MULCH around them yet as my mulch plants aren't up enough to chop and drop yet here in Michigan..but I did put some charred logs around them and have made sure they haven't dried out.

I put them in a couple weeks ago and am getting some baby green leaves growing now..so things are looking up for the hugelbed.

I have lettuce along the center of one side..and spicey italian and spiecy asian greens on the other side..along the top of one side i have planted 16 transplants of cabbage and the other side 4 transplants of broccoli (that's all I had)..the top is waiting on some festivity OP corn and some squash when the weather stabilizes (forcast of 26 for this coming sunday)

in my rear garden i have some super dwarf and dwarf apple trees growing in beds that were made with buried bark and wood chips covered over with soil and compost and they are doing very well...but they aren't tall like this new bed

What is the problem with logs sticking out?

It's funny. I'm not a fan of the logs sticking out either, just aesthetically speaking.

So, I went ahead and planted my fruit trees on the edges of my HK beds. I dug into the crown of the bed and found I had only about 8" of dirt so it wasn't enough to bury the tree roots. I dug into the side of the bed until I hit the logs and dug the hole right in front of it into the ground. Then I built the bed back up around it a bit and mulched around 6" or so from each trunk. So they look like the are on the side of the bed sort of, but are really directly into the ground (I was careful not to bury the graft). They seem very happy and are leafing out and some are flowering even.

Tree hedge row pre-mulch


Apples leafing out


Plum flowering

I have one standard peach on each end of my hugel bed..they are actually ON the ends of the bed but also will root down into the ground BESIDE the ENDS of the big logs in my hugel bed..they also seem to be doing fine, and are leafing out.

This bed is MUCH TOO HIGH to plant on top of with anything like a tree..i could barely reach the top to get corn seed in..and a few transplants of squash, cabbage and broccoli (which I planted cause they don't require a lot of "tending" as I'm just to short to "tend" the top

Sepp commented at a seminar recently that hugel beds are good to plant fruit trees on top of if you want to be able to lift them off and move them later. Basically he was commenting on starting trees and giving them a place to grow for a year or two to develop before moving them. His comment was that, with the proper type of equipment, you could just slide the "tines" of the fork under the roots and lift the tree right off of the top without damaging the roots.

Maybe a small hugel "bump" might not be bad, but I would be concerned about getting substantial enough rooting on top of the bed. I just don't think that there is enough surface area on top.

He did comment about bushes/small trees could be planted at a 45 degree angle to the side to allow their roots to spread out and get a good foothold since they are more or less perpendicular to the side.

Brenda,

build those hugels as tall as you want

the problem is solved with the new "hugel access system" for planting, maintaining, and harvesting

http://www.utilitytruck.net/vantel.html

Based off of what i have read and seen of how Sepp Holzer uses Hugelculture, fruit trees are planted between beds and up to 1/3 up the side of a bed. Keep in mind that these beds are 4 to 6 feet high so planting any higher up the bed would not be practical. I could see him using smaller beds for plants that he will eventually transplant.

Wondering how this turned out?

Jaimee Gleisner wrote:Will it work to plant fruit trees on an HK bed?  Would this be beneficial to the trees as it is to other plants or would it cause problems with their root systems as the bed settles over the years?  Would it be better to plant trees next to the HK bed instead?  If so, what types of plants would make sense to plant on the HK bed next to my trees?

Hugels are notorious for shrinking over time.
Bad idea to plant a tree on or near the top.
Best is at the base of a hugel garden.
Nutrients and rain running off will take care of the tree nicely.
And no worries about the tree falling over from settling soil.

Caution: do not add Humus to the tree hole (backfill). The tree roots will never leave the hole!

Kai Walker wrote:

Caution: do not add Humus to the tree hole (backfill). The tree roots will never leave the hole!

Really? I've never heard anyone say this. What do you recommend? Native soil?

would really love to hear updates on the tree locations and how that worked out. I'm about to do the same in North Carolina.

In regards to the idea of wind breaking the trees...
Is it better to protect them from full force wind during the growing season or the dormant season.
We get strong winds frequently here in KS. Winter is predominantly from the north,  and frequently bitter cold,  while July-September brings strong south winds.  I can see benefits to both,  as the former occurs while the saplings are more vulnerable to breakage,  and the latter is accompanied by up to triple digit heat and tend to dry out EVERYTHING