Wood and dirt pile -> Hugelkultur -- an ongoing build thread

I'm just one man atop a hill, with no power equipment. So it’s important to save myself work where i can. There is a pile of logs, branches, sticks, and dirt on the flat landing here, a central location that gets good sun. I want to make it into a Hugelkultur hugel.

See my last post on this topic if interested in seeing my brainstorming.

I’d originally planned to pretty fully disassemble the pile. But after some digging work today, it seems like many of the interior logs are well-buried in soil. That’s good to see! Seems like i can “massage” the whole pile to sort of pre-settle things and fill in the gaps that i can reach. Plus move some cross-oriented logs, and pile additional logs and branches on the current top.

My next priorities are:

1. Move to a nearby pile much of the good soil/compost that’s right now toward the pile interior, which would be deep inside the final hugel if i left it in place. Will be used for topping.
2. Pull out logs and branches that are perpendicular to the final hugel orientation.
3. Fill in various gaps between wood materials with decomposing plant material

Questions i may try to get an answer to, or which will become answered by this project:

1. Do leaves work well for filling between wood materials, when the mix is as oak-heavy as it is here? Is the acidity of oak leaves less of an issue if i prioritize using more partially-decomposed and soggy leaves from the bottom of piles?
2. Are any of the logs in this pile Black Walnut or other unsuitable wood? Two attached photos show logs i worry could be Black Walnut but i’m still learning tree identification. Anyone who can positively ID these would be doing me a great favor

Last photos i will attach show an aerial view of the site at two levels of zoom. One sketched with the footprint i expect the final hugel to have. Downslope is to the north, to the top of the image, but is very gradual at this site. It appears from local wind data that the prevailing winds will be from the south, so this orientation will follow Holzer’s advice to orient it perpendicular to prevailing winds. Yes it will abut two trees, oriented diagonally between a big dead Post Oak, and the other a living tree.

More to come, i welcome any and all thoughts!

Rather than stuffing just leaves in the gaps, I would incorporate lots of dirt. The leaves will either break down very quickly, leaving big voids in your pile or will dry out, and become somewhat hydrophobic. Then the water that infiltrates your pile will shed off the leaves more than you'd like.  If there's nothing holding water around your logs, your logs won't hold as
much water as you want. Both those things happened to me in my first hugels when I stuffed lots of leaves in and resulted in really dry hugels.

Maybe you get regular rain and it's not such an issue for you, but my hugels need to hold moisture for up to three months of no rain in potentially 30C+ temperatures. Only my later ones, with lots of dirt around every piece of wood can do that.

Noted, Jan, thanks! This area's pretty wet but that's still advice i'll follow. Occurs to me that i could mix up a big batch of soil-claydirt-leaves and use that for gap filling throughout

Gonna be sweet! Thanks for showing what your up to. Is that a baby king snake or something?

I've got some pockets of nice stuff throughout my hugels, but mostly they're just silty sand with almost no organic material. I'm amazed at how well things grow, considering.

I'm sure whatever you do will work well. And if you don't have to worry about the hugel holding moisture for a long time, that makes it even easier.

Dan Fish wrote:Gonna be sweet! Thanks for showing what your up to. Is that a baby king snake or something?

Thanks for checking out the thread! I'm not yet much of a naturalist but it looks like it might be a "ring-necked snake", which my county is in the range of apparently: https://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/prairie-ring-necked-snake

Got in an hour of work on the Hugel yesterday. Dug out more dirt from the existing pile, transferring it to the pile that will eventually be used for topping. Was glad to see a fair number of worms, grubs, and 'pedes during the digging. It seems like healthy soil

To that point, i hope it won't dry out and see too much of the microbiome die out while it's piled up in this smaller pile in the sun. Any thoughts in that regard? There has also been some good fungal growth on a few of the branches i've pulled out as i go – i've stuck a couple of those alongside the pile so they're in contact with that soil. Better than just on their own baking in the sun, right?

Anyway, i'll get the rest of the work done as quickly as i can to hopefully not lose too much more soil life.

Looking ahead to the planting requirements to get a BB out of this, i need to start looking for Sepp Holzer grains, i heard they can be hard to find. Luckily i picked up some Comfrey this past weekend!

I've gotten more dirt out of the pile. Should be sharing pictures of the site with the initial log layout a few days from now.

But right now i'm trying to put my mind at ease about hitting the badge requirements for making this hugel. I think i've made up my mind that since there's so much wood in place and it was already around 18' long, i should go for a 7x7x18 hugel, attempting to get the BBs for a 6' and a 12' hugel at the same time. I want to make sure i have my planning right for that, so i’m looking to double-check a few points with whoever can help.

1. Because both the 6’ and 12’ hugel BBs call for 3 sunchokes and 3 comfrey, i will plant 6 of each over the length of the hugel to get credit. Similarly, i’ll plant over 52 seeds of the Holzer grain, because they call for 12 and 40 respectively.

2. Both BBs call for at least 12 different species to be planted. It seems like i could therefore have a total of 9 species outside the three listed above, planted out over the whole hugel – because each section would still have 12 total species. Still, i plan on getting more like 20 species in there. Will that be fine? Am i misinterpreting and i’ll actually need 24 to satisfy both BB requirements?

3. Similarly, both BBs call for 4 types of mulch. I assume i still just need 4? And if they are leaves, wood chips, chopped down perilla, and chopped down tall grass, that shouldn’t be an issue right?

4. Regarding Comfrey - do you think i’ll be able to break the plant pictured below into 6 parts, and would that be likely to satisfy the requirements?

5. I have a wildflower seed blend which lists around a dozen species on the back. I don’t want to boost my species count that much with it, but what if i list just 3 species from it on my species list, does that seem fair?

6. Any drawbacks i should know about to trying out these cheap grocery-store pinto beans as one of my species?

Here’s my prospective species list, i would welcome any comments on it too:

- Comfrey
- Sunchokes
- Sepp Holzer grain
- Red clover
- White clover
- Hairy vetch
- Some alfalfa
- Field Peas (Austrian winter peas)
- Fava beans
- Snap peas
- Pinto beans
- Lavender
- Rosemary
- Kale
- Sunflowers
- Zinnias
- Coneflowers
- Tomatoes
- Summer squash
- Wildflower blend

Exciting progress today! I disassembled the pile down to ground level, and started arranging the first layer of logs for my future hugel!

You'll see i decided on a C shape for it. I am interested in seeing the effects of the sun scoop and potentially more distinct microclimates. But honestly, the primary reason for me is that the non-linear appearance is pleasing to my eye. Plus when guests see it, i think it hints at permaculture's vibe, and it invites a discussion of sun scoops and microclimates.

The last bit to note is i made the first batch of my gap-filling mix. I'm using orange clay-ey dirt i have from another project, mixed with leaves and some forest topsoil/sticks. This clay dirt really clumps together stickily – i may need to add even more organic material to ensure i'm not just sealing tight the gaps where i put it.

Looking forward to more progress tomorrow, before i leave here for a few days for Easter.

Back from Easter! The big milestone today, which came in the morning, was getting the hugest log of the bunch up atop the first layer. This took a bunch of painstaking work levering up one side, using other big logs for counterweight, adding chocks, and eventually using my whole body to tip it up and over into place.

The rest of the work was moving smaller – yet plenty big – logs into place, and retrieving batches of gap filling mixture from my clay dirt pile. I'm scratched up and tired, but feel quite pleased with the progress.

Here's the post where i say "oh no i'm in way over my head!" No, i'm not actually looking at it that way. Hey, at least part of the hugel is over my head....

Yesterday and today i've done a ton of work. I've been hauling loads of clay dirt, and collecting leaves and pruned branches in addition to the stacking and dirt flinging.

There was a point i came to where i thought "maybe i'm not putting enough soil and other material between the layers of logs". I'd be interested to hear if anyone thinks i'm still not doing so, and thinks it will be a problem. I can still try to fix it at this point.

One recalibration i made was to focus my efforts on one side of my "V" shape. Main reason being that i would like to get a feel for the remaining steps on a smallish scale so that i can work out kinks. One example of that being that as i was adding an unfinished-compost and organic materials layer i realized i could poke more largish sticks in through that matrix of material, to lay beside the logs.

Another recalibration, which came because i was listening to a PTJ recap episode of Paul's podcast, was to switch to laying logs perpendicular to the hugel's sweep. This was mentioned by one of the instructors as preferable for getting dirt to stay on.

So here comes a bunch of pictures, and please please let me know if you see any big thing i could improve on for the rest of this work.

By the way, for those following along, i think i'll just go for the 7x7x12 Hugelkultur BB for now, by finishing one arm of the "V" shape.

Photos:

Turns out the heavy log-moving was the easy part, or at least the quick work. Or it's just that i'm tired out. Anyway, i've been completing the stack for the first leg of the "V", and layering on more organic material, and covering more of that section in topsoil. Forgot to get a final photo of where i ended for the day today. It's going to rain tomorrow, so we'll see how that settles the current topsoil layer

Photos from the last two days.

Liam,

I have been following your project with interest.  I have been wanting to enter some commentary of my own (all positive by the way), but I have been pinched for time until now.  Your hugel mounds look GREAT!  And you did all that work by hand?  Wow!  I would have used my tractor, but I understand you don't have access to one.  That makes your project all the more impressive.

With all that wood piled up there I have one thought for you that may be helpful.  Have you considered adding in any mushrooms to help eat all that wood?  I like to grow Wine Caps and I would think that with all those logs and wood that Wine Caps would thrive.  Wine Caps are very aggressive, care-free mushrooms that are edible and are hard to miss.  After they have consumed wood, the left over detritus is extremely fertile and would only add to the fertility of your mound.  I grow them in raised beds filled with wood chips that I then convert to mushroom compost for garden bedding, but I am thinking that the same principle applies to your  project as well.

I know that I get overly enthusiastic about Wine Caps, so please don't think I am telling you what you have to do--do what you want, it is your project!  But if you are interested, Wine Caps might do very well.

Again, that is a great project and I am looking forward to how it progresses.

Eric

Eric i love that idea, i'm game to make any amendments that someone thoughtful thinks are worthwhile. Do you mean that i'm likely to encounter Wine Caps around my woods, or in the nearby national forest? I've been thinking a minimal bit of material (respectfully) claimed from the nearby Irish Wilderness might be a suitable way to inoculate my soil further. Especially given that the soil pile has been sitting out in the sun for weeks now - i imagine much of the outer layer has been in suboptimal conditions for soil microbiota.

Also practically, do you think any mycelium or mushroom material should be layered directly onto wood where possible. Alternatively, how do you think the effectiveness would compare if i just mixed it into already-layered top soil. Perhaps this question is one i should plan on collecting some first-hand experience with, to share here!

Liam, you ask great questions.

What I had in mind was using Wine Cap infused sawdust that I purchase from a reputable vendor.  Do you get Wine Caps growing natively in Ireland?  If so, then use those.

As far as integrating them into the hugel mound, Wine Caps are ideal as they like a wood-soil interface.  You clearly have that in your mound.  Also, Wine Caps are aggressive colonizers and consumers of wood, so they would break down that wood quickly, leaving behind amazing mushroom compost (I LOVE the stuff).  Further, Wine Caps are not really picky about their location and thrive on neglect.  These combination of factors seems to make them perfect for colonizing a hugel mound.  

And if that were not enough, of course you can eat them--but pick them early because when they get huge, you might just rather eat the wood on which they grew.

In all honesty, Wine Caps are a great mushroom to start growing in your hugel mound.  If you like, I can point you in some of the right directions, though most of my experience has been in growing in wood chips.  Still, I think it can work in your situation as well.

Eric

Alright what, does Big Wine Cap pay you to post in forums like this? I'm just kidding, as far as i can see unpaid enthusiasm is one of the most under-cultivated resources in the world. Appreciate seeing it

Though i'm named Liam and live by a place called Irish Wilderness, the assumption that i'm in Ireland would be incorrect. I'm out west of Poplar Bluff, MO which you may be familiar with. Actually in PB today.

I'm going to take this Wine Cap idea and run with it! Expect to hear back about this, though like you i can end up pinched for time with everything that wants doing

I am from Southern Illinois, so not too far from you--much closer than I was thinking!

Got back from a day away just a bit before sunset, spent an hour "whittling" the angle of the dirt pile to make the hugel pointier. After yesterday's inch or so of rain, the soil was a nice stickiness for this work. Will see if there's any major avalanche. Some pictures to show what it looked like before the rain, then a few stages of whittling it down. Will be reclaiming a lot of good soil to cover other areas with if this sharper shape can (literally) stick.

I've been building hügelkulturs for many years. I recently looked through some of the recently published books on the topic and it seems that it's still being done the same way.

So, I'll go over what I call the basics, because there's not really a ton of anything and it's all basic. LOL

1) Big log bottom -- this is from whence your Hügelkultur derives its longevity.

Avoid hardwoods that are slow to break down OR add in a fair amount of soft wood, such as pine. People will debate what you can and can't use when it comes to wood, but I've always done fine with a nice blend from the surrounding area.

Oak Walnut and Cedar are known for a very slow rate of decay, which is not exactly what we want, soooooo make sure to keep that wood to less than half of your base.

2) The Base, Height and slanting sides --  ideally, a 6' base at 6' height (to account for settling/compacting) and the angle of the sides at no more than 45°... especially during the first year of establishing your mound.

Eventually, you'll see things settle down to around 4' high and the slant of the sides will not matter once your Hügelkultur is established... things won't roll down the side, especially with wind and rain.

When they do roll down, put them right back up there.

3) Twigs and Branches -- this next later is wood that will break down much sooner.

4) Nitrogen and Other Nutrients -- this layer is where you put the yard clippings... Grass is full of nitrogen and other nutrients that are less readily available from the carbon-contributing wood.

5) Watering -- Some might be required depending on your climate during the first year, but after that, the big wood will hold the water quite well.

The wet wood will create a number of goodies including fungus growth.

6) Mushrooms -- The Eastern Shore of Virginia supplies the massive hay bales to Pennsylvania mushroom farmers. The hay is rolled at the end of the season and sits for weeks to months before being taken north. By that time it has become the perfect medium for mushroom growing.  I would suggest research but I'm pretty sure the best/popular mushrooms are best grown using hay bales, so you might want to consider that.

7) Dirt -- The final layer...

It does not need to be composted dirt because this whole mound is a composting machine.

You can mix in anything with that green layer, the same as you would your compost; this is the way I've always done mine.

Logs are relative -- They do not need to be 36" tree trunks to qualify but you probably want them to be 6" or larger.

Cut to a manageable length and drag with your truck or UTV.

Build or buy a truck bed davit to hoist, move/load and place the logs to make things easier.

9) Super wet land --. I have typically used old wooden pallets, especially weathered ones, to fill a wet area, such as by the creek where someone previously thought they could dig a huge pit and make a pond.

Spoiler Alert -- that only makes a mud pit.

Since I need multiple layers, I start with spreading wood mulch over the entire area and then make a "dock" of pallets down to the creek. These pallets are in their usual orientation, making them easy to walk across. I backfill the pallets with wood mulch (courtesy of Asplundh) and grass clippings... which will lead to rooted growth which will stabilize the earth.

From there, I cover the area in pallets, which I flip upside down. This orientation makes these quick and easy to backfill with the wood mulch-grass clippings mix.  The topside, having more boards, makes a solid surface on the boggy soil and will absorb water. The backfill-mix will absorb some moisture and, because it is a "hot" mix, it will cause some moisture to evaporate from the pallet wood and the surrounding soil.

This leads to great growth of grass and natural flora.

If necessary, and it's is at my new house, I will add another layer to the entire area with pallets in the same orientation for the same reasons.

I want access to the creek so that I can throw on chest-waders and go in to "dredge" out some fertile mud/muck for the Hügelkultur etc.


Later, I can build a Hügelkultur atop this area once it's more stable and able to bear weight.

Eventually, this area will return to the more compact soil that it was prior to it being dug out.

10) Length & Shape -- in the past, these mounds were integrated into the defense plan of a settlement, for obvious reasons... so length and shape are completely up to you.

I am leveling my entire "front" yard by gradual means using terraced Hügelkulturs. They will hold my gardens, flowers and grapevines while I fill the space between them over time.

I might leave them a bit lower than my mounds OR I might then begin to revitalize my Hügelkulturs by adding new layers atop the old, so that I keep them going for decades AND maintain a nice working height of around 3'-4' above grade.

To be honest, of you want a giant round mound, because you have a big mound of old dead tree trunks someone piled up in one spot, then go for it!

If you want it straight, then INSTEAD of pulling out bottom logs and disturbing the decay process, consider cutting off anything beyond that 6' base width.

I use a battery powered 80V Brushless Motor Worx 24" chainsaw for sawyering and planking (with a Ripping Chain... 10° instead of 30°, as I recall) with my favorite chains from Australia. Archer chainsaw chains have proven to beat Oregon and everything else.

No need to work harder if you don't need to... Which includes digging a swale.

That's not necessary except in the drier/arid climates where it will enhance decomposition and improve water retention in the wood.

Otherwise, digging a trench means adding that much more material in order to be at a certain height above grade.


I doubt that I've supplied anything new or useful to y'all but hopefully it will be found useful by future folks who stumble upon these posts.

~Tex

I find that a great practical summary Tex, thank you. There's one thing you said, and this aspect has been befuddling me for a while actually:

Tex McFaden wrote:
2) The Base, Height and slanting sides --  ideally, a 6' base at 6' height (to account for settling/compacting) and the angle of the sides at no more than 45°... especially during the first year of establishing your mound.

How can a 6' base 6' height triangle have a rise angle of even close to 45º? With those dimensions i'd expect it the angles where the hugel side meets the ground to be 63º. Because having a 6' base, 6' height triangle would mean the two slanted sides are around 6.71' long (two 3'x6'x6.71' right triangles back to back). According to an online calculator, that triangle would have the angles 63.4ºx63.4ºx53.2º.

Stated differently, wouldn't a hugel with rise/run of 45º have a 12' to be 6' tall?

I've been wondering about this for a while in the context of how steep it seems you have to make the hugel for a hugel badge if you follow the minimum requirements of 7' tall and 7' wide.

Tex! I have been looking for a post like this!
Thank you. Can you please share photos?!!

I have a sloping front yard and am thinking “terraces” too!

Hi Allison,  

Welcome to Permies.

It's done, planted and mulched! The first leg of the V that is. That's enough hugel for me for now! Plan will be to onboard Eric's suggestion about Wine Cap mushrooms for the other leg of the V, which will remain in the stacked-wood phase for a while. That brings me to my first advice-seeking question:

What should i cover the incomplete section of the hugel in, given that i might not continue work on it for almost a year?

Thanks again to Tex for that extensive but very digestible Hugelkultur overview. It led me to layer in a lot more branch/twig matter before adding organic material, everywhere i still could.

Here are the first key shots to share, showing the broad outline of the work over the past week:

I would like to write a good summary post that would offer guidance to anyone else attempting to build a big hugel like this using just manpower. For now, a smattering of my thoughts on it:

- 7 feet wide at the base can be hit if you have a first layer of logs that's 4 feet wide, or maybe even less
- spending some time on pulling together materials that will all go on together should save back-and-forth time later when you're actually say layering in the sticks, for example
- during final soil layering, i ended up favoring hand-piling on moist soil to my initial strategy of flinging soil on top by shovel. It's more painstaking, but it's less tiring and seems potentially more efficient overall because you don't get lots rolling off. Might only work with sufficiently moist conditions, which for me came after rains but you might wet things with a hose.
- i think it would have been a good move to make two piles of soil when i was excavating at the beginning, the second one being on the other side of the hugel build area. That way i wouldn't have had to wheelbarrow soil around the corner to the backside during the final layering


Okay a second question:

What are the top tips for initally seeding your steep hugel? Many of my cover crop seeds rolled down to the base. Manually poking hundreds of holes for the other various bean/veggie seeds was a bit tedious, does anyone have some clever "hack"? Or just KISS?


And finally:
Is my mulch layer too thick, or too messy? (see below) Someone sell me on why i should go back to it sometime to neaten it up.

Liam - awesome hugel! well done.
I haven't any experience to share unfortunately, and questions about mulch can be very climate specific. The risk of having it too thick is that you could smother any new seeds and stop them growing. Maybe this is a 'suck it and see' situation.

If you can get hold of fresh grass clippings, that would be a better fill than leaves, but you will have to periodically return and add more, as the buried grass with ferment in the heat and collapse into a nitrogenous goop which will help decompose your wood.

I would always anticipate at least some internal collapse in a hugel mound, particularly one that uses thicker logs.

The bark does look like black walnut to me. If you can "massage" those to one or two specific parts of the pile, you can plant a juglone-tolerant guild there. This list was compiled for zone 3 https://joybileefarm.com/plants-will-grow-near-black-walnut-trees/

My soil is very sandy, so mine would never sit at such a steep slope as yours. What I ended up doing was building my hugel over three years, each year doing a couple feet of height and seeding it all. This way, the whole thing got roots all through it, which helped keep it together and support the next layer the next year. It also added a nice layer of green material for me to build on top of.

Another thing I did in problematic spots was to poke a whole bunch of twigs down vertically into the dirt on the sides, so make teeny terraces. Those were good spots to sprinkle seeds, since they wouldn't roll down. Those little twigs have since been buried in many layers of mulch, so they've disappeared and the sides have stabilised.

I also just threw handfuls of seeds against the side really hard, so some of them would hopefully sink into the soil a bit, instead of rolling down 😆  It actually seemed to work not too badly and it was kinda fun.

And, yeah, I just poked a loooot of holes.

I hope you keep us updated on how your hugel performs. I would have put a lot more dirt into it, but my sand doesn't hold much moisture. I'll be interested to see how thin layers of clayey soil work.

Having built all my hugels by hand, I can appreciate how much work went into yours! I hope it lives up to your expectations.

As for the unfinished wing, I'd just mulch it a foot or so deep with whatever you have around, adding more, if you can, as it settles and breaks down.

Time for an update! Post-planting i totally checked out. The upside is, there’s growth on the thing despite me ignoring it for ~3 weeks. And there’s been minimal rain.

The past few days i’ve been tending to it a bit and observing it. With the sun swinging so far north at the start and end of the day as we near summer, i’ve realized it gets quite a bit of shade from the peripheral trees. As with all things natural, this isn’t necessarily a “bad” or even “sub-optimal” thing. I’m not relying on growing my own food yet, so so what, there’s still growth. On the plus side, i’m in the partial shade when i work it at the start or end of the day. After 9am it’s in the sun and the bugs start a-buggin’ me.

I’ve tidied up the mulch and seeded some more clover.

Jan if i had seen your message sooner i would have tried the “whip the seeds at it like you’re mad at it” method! Sounds satisfying. As for my unfinished wing, i’m finding it to be a really useful step up for working on the tall side. So i dont think i’ll fully mulch it lest it become harder to walk up and down. But i’ll cover a lot of it. I read how any exposed wood sort of wicks out moisture from the rest of the hugel. When it comes time to finish and plant this second wing i think i’ll be keeping it about the height it is. It occurred to me that a two-level hugel could have some cool possibilities.

And hey, Peace, i had a neighbor who’s from this area and knows his trees to look at all the ones i was worried about and he said they’re not black walnut. Red oak or some other type. Interesting to see about the various species that are fine w juglone tho. Will check that out again if i’m ever planting near some of the black walnuts in my woods.

Nice to see the progress of your hugelkultur! Maybe one day, it will be so big that you will need to make a pathway to reach the top parts (I kid you not), like in this mound at Wheaton Labs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwktPhJ43kU