Is there any side by side comparison for yields?

I really wonder why so many people do huegelculture. I really think that Sepp Holzer has a lot to offer, just Huegelculture is not that great.
A friend asks me why I don't throw old wood in the beds.
OK that's my question: are there any side-by-side comparisons huegelculture / "normal" regarding the plant health and most importantly the yields?

GAMCOD could help address this question if there was enough participation and variability.

I didn't understand the beauty of hugelkulture was about yields:

Suppose it is found that hugelkultur can create a planting bed that stays fertile for decades, requiring no fertilizer inputs. Suppose further that multicropping it makes pests much less of a problem, requiring no pesticide inputs. This is what you need in a world where fossil fuels are used up, but you still have lots of mouths to feed and lots of hands to do the labor.

https://permies.com/t/26011/benefits-hugelkultur#205242

These threads might be of interest:

https://permies.com/t/29870/Hugelkultur-Experimentation

https://permies.com/t/25641/hugelkultur-credible-studies-sources-effectiveness

Angelika Maier wrote:I really wonder why so many people do huegelculture. I really think that Sepp Holzer has a lot to offer, just Huegelculture is not that great.

I do it because I have lots of very heavy clay soil that sucks up organic matter without a trace after a few years. Rotting wood makes a huge difference in soil texture. From heavy, slimy sticky gunk that turns to brick in the dry summer, to light, crumbly, easy to turn soil. But I have no idea if my yields are any better. The heavy clay does make pretty good veggies.

In my opinion hugelkutur is the best thing I can do with  tree trimmings and logs that are no good for splitting by hand like sweet gum. In the Olympic Forest I see huge trees that spent the younger part of their lives growing entirely from old dead "nurse" logs. This was what made me realize the value of burying wood in the ground. I don't burn any of my wood scrap anymore except when I have to heat my house. I make brush piles to and don't burn them anymore. I've got lizards and tree frogs overwintering in them and birds nesting in them in spring. I used to waste thousands of pounds of scrap wood, burning it away to a few ounces of charcoal but found out after decades it was depleting my soil in my opinion.  I found the empty nutrientless black charcoal left behind is a continuous dessicant sucking moisture away from the surrounding soil and exasperated drought effects in my opinion. If I simply bury a light amount of dead branches it has the opposite effect.  It absorbs moisture as it decomposes and also releases it like a wet sponge throughout the entire dry summer. Also the wood is full of enough nutrients to support trees as seen in nurse logs as I mentioned. Also salamanders hibernate in them and some varieties of earthworms and other life forms.  Most of all I am keeping 100% of my humus and valuable flammable minerals like magnesium ,etc. and gasses in my soil instead of throwing it all away into the atmosphere. I wish I'd have began with this hugelkutur.

Tom, we have super heavy nutrient poor clay soil mixed with sand and a non-existent drainage together with a generally high water table. What I found is that the wood which is buried (I did huegel swale which was a very bad idea) did not rot.If it would create a sponge that would be great. We do charcoal also and I believe that helps.

Angelika Maier wrote:Tom, we have super heavy nutrient poor clay soil mixed with sand and a non-existent drainage together with a generally high water table. What I found is that the wood which is buried (I did huegel swale which was a very bad idea) did not rot.If it would create a sponge that would be great. We do charcoal also and I believe that helps.

Sounds like you are missing the organisms to break down the organic materials. Adding in compost when building the hugel might help. Also using a lot of different nitrogen fixing plants with deep rooted plants to pair nitrogen with the carbon of the trees also might help break the trees down.

Angelika Maier wrote:Tom, we have super heavy nutrient poor clay soil mixed with sand and a non-existent drainage together with a generally high water table. What I found is that the wood which is buried (I did huegel swale which was a very bad idea) did not rot.If it would create a sponge that would be great. We do charcoal also and I believe that helps.

Maybe the water-logged soil is lacking O2? Since it is nutrient-poor the bugs may be having a hard time surviving. Some nutrient-rich compost or manure might help. Some wood species rot very slowly. I have some that just sit down there and I revisit them every time I dig up the garden. Others are gone in a year or two. This spring I used wood that had been sitting out for 20 years and was already very soft. Interested to see what it looks like later this fall when I dig.

By the way, what was bad about the swale?