Paul Wheaton's hugelkultur article thread

two more pics

Welcome Joshua. Nice Job! I'm still in the process of working on my hugel system. Your photos are an inspiration! Thanks If you don't mind me asking... where are those beautiful hugel mounds located in the world?

mile elevation. zone 6a. south Idaho.

It was quite a lot of work. But well worth it. I have a neighbor that takes huge logs and stumps from all the people in the surrounding area who remove them. And he just leaves them on his property......doing nothing with them.... Gonna have a chat with him........

Thanks for the info Joshua. I hope you get the opportunity to put those stumps to good use!

Very very interesting topic which is why I joined. We live on 66 acres in the Catskill small mountain range upstate NY where I grow many (300+) nut trees with a large number of pawpaws and American persimmons. Years ago because as an environmentalist I do not like burning brush, I decided to create heaps of brush, including dead unusable logs in our woods (20 acres) which would help young critters, rabbits, grouse, et al have a place to hang out. As they brush piles rot we replenish them in other areas. The extra firewood I give to one of my part time workers who heats with wood. We used to but the house I just built does not have a wood stove yet, though one exists in my office there.

We grow pecans and pecan hybrids and though they are around 30 feet tall they will probably not fruit in my life time but will do so in the future. We also have many black walnuts, unfortunately there is a blight which has travelled from California to Tennessee and Missouri (one of the largest black walnut producers in the US) and there is nothing to prevent its spreading further. It apparently does not affect butternut trees which are related but which are being destroyed by environmental diseases. We have hazelnuts (filberts), hicans (pecan-hickory), heart nuts, relatively hardy American chestnut hybrids, chinese chestnuts, hickory nuts (my favorite nut), etc. We are a large producer of pawpaws which we sell locally, we have about 70+ fruiting trees and about 40 fruiting American persimmons. This is not a successful business as it costs us more than we make from sales but I am retired and enjoy sharing. I may try some hugelkultur this summer as we have many large compost piles.

Howdy Philip, welcome to permies!
Sounds like you have lots of experience with nut trees?
How about posting in the trees forum about some information we all might use?

Miles Flansburg wrote:Howdy Philip, welcome to permies!
Sounds like you have lots of experience with nut trees?
How about posting in the trees forum about some information we all might use?

Be happy to, Miles. Actually am not totally cognizant of all the various forums:) I guess I will copy much of what I posted here and paste it there as an intro.
Thanks,

/* Phil */

I took this photo in the Redwoods National Park, in Northern California many years ago...the "original hugelkultur".


Ben

These are my problems to building hugoculture in Northern Nigeria (bordering Sahara).
Finding woods will be difficult and expensive.
Is there any tree or plants substitute to wood I could find here and use?
The. Soil here is sandy and not fertile.
Using this method does it yield?which crops will be best in with this method?

How about using millets and corn sticks (stems)after harvest instead of wood?

Please help with solutions.thanks.

PM me or tunnello85@yahoo.com

musa sani wrote:These are my problems to building hugoculture in Northern Nigeria (bordering Sahara).
Finding woods will be difficult and expensive.
Is there any tree or plants substitute to wood I could find here and use?
The. Soil here is sandy and not fertile.
Using this method does it yield?which crops will be best in with this method?

How about using millets and corn sticks (stems)after harvest instead of wood?

Please help with solutions.thanks.

PM me or tunnello85@yahoo.com

That should work except they may compost faster then wood... So may not last as long but go ahead and give it a try...

Blayne Sukut wrote:

musa sani wrote:These are my problems to building hugoculture in Northern Nigeria (bordering Sahara).
Finding woods will be difficult and expensive.
Is there any tree or plants substitute to wood I could find here and use?
The. Soil here is sandy and not fertile.
Using this method does it yield?which crops will be best in with this method?

How about using millets and corn sticks (stems)after harvest instead of wood?

Please help with solutions.thanks.

PM me or tunnello85@yahoo.com

That should work except they may compost faster then wood... So may not last as long but go ahead and give it a try...

I believe you will end up with good soil but as stated above, millets and corn stems et al, will compost much faster than logs and depending on your equipment you will have a large compost pile that will break down in a short while into fairly good soil whereas the hugelkultur logs take a long while to breakdown and therefore provide a structure and the material (resultant soil) for agriculture during the long breakdown period.

/* Philip */

My understanding is that in a tropical or sub tropical climate, a banana circle does some of the same things. Geoff Lawton calls hugelkultur a "banana circle upside down."

Hi please,I like to build a big hugul beds,in a sandy region.its Rainy season from June to October and I want
Know if I could setup these beds in long lines,to plant some millet and beans in between.
And after the raining season if I could plant some corn and vegetables on the hugel beds?
second thing is that,are the only trees I have for making the hugel beds.
Locus beans tree
Acacias
Gum tree
Mango tree and
Adansonia. but I think I should leave these one out.superstition.

PLEASE I REALLY NEED ANY INFORMATION THAT WILL HELP.
THANKS

Well now, a couple of hours ago before I started going through this thread, I had never heard of this hugelkultur. It's really quite fantastic.

I have a pile of slash from my sawmill that I haven't run for the past few years. I was trying to clear all the old wood up, mostly cutting it into firewood length pieces for the coming winter. But the bottom of this pile has got pretty rotten and is useless for firewood. So now, of course, I will try and move some of it up to an old raised bed that I have here and try and make use of it.

The soil here, if you can call it that, is very thin on top of the bedrock, and what is there hardly grows anything. So, I'm going to bet that a nice big pile (no neighbours to whine about it) will be a huge improvement. Anything that we have been able to grow has needed raised beds. So to me, this seems to confirm that the big hugel bed will do a far better job. The part that I really like is the no watering. The only water I have here is from roof catchment, so to be able to grow food without water will be a major blessing.

One thing I can get is seaweed. So I'm going to add that as well. Not so much at this time of year, but in the fall and spring, there's lots of seaweed around.

Not expecting much rain between now and the end of September, but I will get started on the first bed right away. Should be interesting.

Urban hugelkultur

Not quite sure which thread would be the best fit for this so I'm just putting it here, if someone wants to move it to a better spot go ahead!


Finding Wood for Hugelkultur


--It isn't quite as easy as I thought, Oh, I'll just grab this pile of wood I happen to have living around in my postage-stamp-sized urban apartment. Oh, I'll just saw some branches off my maple with the saw I don't have, nevermind that maple is a hard wood and the handsaw the carpenter could lend me would take FOREVER to get through it.

--So I was thinking, where can you get some wood? well, the woods.

And of course there are fallen trees. You could cut one up by hand. With the handsaw you borrowed from the carpenter.

But even better, someone may have cut down a tree and chainsawed it up into bits. (Which reminds me of a John LaJoie song, "I don't give a chainsaw, I dont' give a chainsaw, Chainsaw everyone, chainsaw everything, I don't give a chainsaw.") This does happen sometimes when a tree falls over the path and the trail maintenance folk take the tree apart and just leave the logs there for anyone to take. And no one takes them because who has a wood-burning stove, let alone a sledgehammer, in the city?

Next how do you get the f-ckers home? Cause realistically you're too lazy (you being me here, I mean, I'm not calling you lazy) to bike them back home one at a time in your backpack. One on each handlebar. Dangerous. Don't try it.

Do you have a friend who has a car? a parent? maybe it's justified in this instance to lean on that friend who does. It's for a good cause.

OK, it was the perfect excuse to call this woman I really like who has a car...

If not, shopping cart or laundry cart is a BIG improvement over no wheels. If you can find some on your local streets, or accessble from the street, like in a park, edge of a property where there are a few trees and no one's looking (who really cares that you stole their rotting wood), or something like that, Other side of the fence from the bike trail I found a bunch. Also, on the trees--the drought is a hugelkutlurist's feast, cause there's low-hanging branches to pull off and snap. If you have a wheelbarrow, well, we're not even having this conversation, you're all set. I would love to have a wheelbarrow. Which reminds me, there's freecycle. You win some, you lose some, maybe adjust your vibration and you win all of them, I don't know.

Lastly, you can just accumulate the things piecemeal, or maybe you can do a demented kickstarter campaign --"Bring me wood, preferably rotting, and I shall reward you with...a tomato! Next year! when the nitrogen starts to really kick in!")

OK, but those are my thoughts on real hugelpolitik, in an urban setting.

No, no one looks at me weird when I walk down the bike path carrying a branch 8' long.

OMG just remembered I know a woodworker right in town here who probably has scrap wood that's probably some of it chemical-free...not wet or rotting, but every bit helps. Location, location, location.

Scored some pallets from next door neighbor, and I realized if you don't have a chainsaw you can "pre-rot" some wood (go to the woods with a bucket and dump it on the rotten wood you want to cut a day ahead of time, assuming you can find a body of water nearby, and then when you saw it it will be much easier. Or wait till it's just rained. It's been so dry here that even the rotting wood is hard as a brick.) So, that's another way to make hugeling even easier!

musa sani wrote:Hi please,I like to build a big hugul beds,in a sandy region.its Rainy season from June to October and I want
Know if I could setup these beds in long lines,to plant some millet and beans in between.
And after the raining season if I could plant some corn and vegetables on the hugel beds?
second thing is that,are the only trees I have for making the hugel beds.
Locus beans tree
Acacias
Gum tree
Mango tree and
Adansonia. but I think I should leave these one out.superstition.

PLEASE I REALLY NEED ANY INFORMATION THAT WILL HELP.
THANKS

Hi Musa,

I hope you got answers that you needed. Did you try making the hugel beds and how's it been going? It sounds like you could just give it a try and see what happens, I doubt anyone's tried it in your exact climate from this site or they'd have posted on here by now...but maybe you could find people in the "region" section of this site, somewhere they have an "Africa" region. I think it's under "regional resources."

If you can't get trees, maybe woody vines? around here we have lots of bittersweet, it's a weed and grows very vigorously.

good luck!

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:...you can "pre-rot" some wood (go to the woods with a bucket and dump it on the rotten wood you want to cut a day ahead of time, assuming you can find a body of water nearby, and then when you saw it it will be much easier. Or wait till it's just rained. It's been so dry here that even the rotting wood is hard as a brick.)

The HKs last longer if the wood is fresh, not rotten. Another reason to use fresh wood is to give the mycelium in the soil something to eat. I think the only time you wouldn't want fresh wood is if you were using something like willow that might re-sprout.

I'm surprised it's been so dry in MA. Here in Vermont we had the 3rd wettest July on record but it's been an excellent growing season because it's been raining at night.

Wow, that's a good point. I guess I was over-paranoid abotu the first year lacking nitrogen. And also looking for ways to cut wood with a hand saw, fresh wood would be really a lot of work, but maybe you can get it after a storm. Does wetting the wood once just to soften it for cutting really shorten its half-life that much?? I have poplar in the mix (the pallets) and just about every piece of wood I found was some kind of hardwood, it seemed, so I've been trying to balance it out with something more short-term.

Yeah we're getting rain here now, and in North Carolina I haer they had 7 inches in the past month!!! Here it's been so dry the grass at the edge of public parks is brown-red up to a foot from the edge, the soil is dry in a fully-grown wild meadow field, the rotting wood isn't rotting that I can perceive...and I confess to having irrigated! Long-term vision is still to get off dependency on that entirely, but for now I am thinking it's good to accelerate things a bit to get the soil repaired, to kind of jump start things in a better direction.

Cj Verde wrote:

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:...you can "pre-rot" some wood (go to the woods with a bucket and dump it on the rotten wood you want to cut a day ahead of time, assuming you can find a body of water nearby, and then when you saw it it will be much easier. Or wait till it's just rained. It's been so dry here that even the rotting wood is hard as a brick.)

The HKs last longer if the wood is fresh, not rotten. Another reason to use fresh wood is to give the mycelium in the soil something to eat. I think the only time you wouldn't want fresh wood is if you were using something like willow that might re-sprout.

I'm surprised it's been so dry in MA. Here in Vermont we had the 3rd wettest July on record but it's been an excellent growing season because it's been raining at night.

A couple of quick notes:

1) be careful with pallet wood. A lot of pallet wood has been treated with toxic gick.

2) there was mention of cutting up pallet wood. I recommend keeping all wood in as big of pieces as possible.

Thanks much, Paul. Is there any way to tell if the pallet has been treated? It's poplar, the guy said, so I thought it woudln't need it... thanks!

As for cutting it up, I cut a hole in the middle for the taproot of the tree I want to plant in the middle of the bed. It may not be the best design to put the tree there as far as being at the highest-and-driest point on the mound, but I have limited space and am trying to get comfrey to grow around it (and taproot down through the bottom of the bed. The topsoil was so poor or compacted that the comfrey almost died when I planted it there, and so I figure I'll give it a head start with the hugel soil and then it can get its way down into the soil below. When I dug the comfreys up to plant them there their roots were only an inch or so deep!)

Also, Sepp Holzer made me do it! he said you could use pallets. And then I found pallets, so I decided to go for it. Hopefully no gick...they were for a delivery of stone for a patio, I would think no one would care if a pallet for stones had ants in it or something because they're not gonna chew on stone. Until we manage to breed a new species of super-ant that eats stone. Which could have its own uses. Yay!

paul wheaton wrote:A couple of quick notes:

1) be careful with pallet wood. A lot of pallet wood has been treated with toxic gick.

2) there was mention of cutting up pallet wood. I recommend keeping all wood in as big of pieces as possible.

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Is there any way to tell if the pallet has been treated?

Yes. Take a look at this site

New to the forum. Gimpy 60+ year old retired guy with a dream of being part of a much smaller, very rural community.

Okay, this has been insane. I just finished reading 25 pages. What a blast of information and help.

I'm aware of hugelkultur but just found this site and it has given me exactly what I needed to understand the subject in detail. Let me give a little background.

I have about 150 acres of high desert forested property at 4500ft. (Just about 1 mile long by a quarter mile wide) Not more than about 5 foot of variance in elevation across the property. Mostly second growth pine and small (2"-4") trees that have become very overgrown. Also a lot of sagebrush. Basically just neglected forest land a mile off the highway on a non-county maintained dirt road. Probably more than a few acres of old dead trees on the ground. Much of it is lightweight due to decay. I need to cut fence lines and a few roads through out the property. Winters are cold and the rare winter can produce 10 foot deep snow. Growing season is short. Summers, a high of 90 with significant drops at night. Maybe 15-20 inches of precipitation. Summers produce nothing but dust clouds behind vehicles. Dry silty soil. Going to build a real log home. Bought a bandsaw mill to cut logs into usable dimensional lumber for farm structures.

Now I find this sight with all the answers to what I have to do to make my property a place to live and thrive. The added benefit will be to make my property more wildlife friendly. Recently bought 4 old bathtubs to use as wildlife water sources. We have coyotes, a pack of wolves, bear, deer, elk, mountain lions, bobcats, badger, and an occasional run away lama that stops by. Plenty of 4 legged visitors to keep us entertained.

We have a house in town and have been dropping all our "yard waste" off in a growing pile over the last 1.5 years. Also recently acquired about 50-60 cu/yds of year old horse manure now in a pile on the property. Acquired a dump trailer and a full size tractor. Access to a small Dozer. The only thing I was missing was this site.

Now I can get started. Will have to knock down plenty of smaller trees for the fence lines and roads. Most will be used for wildlife friendly fencing with plenty of leftover dead wood on the ground. Plenty of slash I will produce trimming and limbing trees. The best part is about an acre or so seasonal lake. One that I had wanted to deepen during the dry season. Now I've found a use for that lake bottom soil.

Can't wait to get started and start posting progress and pictures of my first hugel creation.

Thanks for a few days of reading material. Very cool to see the diversity of members worldwide.

Welcome, Ed! Great that you're findings o much information and inspiration on this site! Just want to throw out a suggestion, you might read Sepp Holzer's books, he's at 5,000' altitude and does al ot with animals and ponds and is extremely awesome. There's a whole Sepp Holzer section on the forum here:

https://permies.com/forums/f-150/sepp-holzer

He also has a new book on reversing desertification in areas like Portugal, temperate climate but desertification. Seems like it matches well with your area.

You might want to try doing just one thing at a time. Dig up a part of the lake bed, but not the whole thing, for example (I don't know much about pond/lake development but I figure if there's some chance of damaging some important vital something at the bottom of the pond, then digging only a part at first will ensure that you don't destroy all of that vital important something.) Make one road and them observe the impact, before you go and make all your roads. You can only do one thing at a time anyway, so you might as well space them out and observe, obesrve, observe.

Advice costs nothing and is generally worth it, but I think it might be worth considering this. maybe more experienced people than myself will have something to chime in about here.

Great that you have so much land and so much vision! best of luck to you, and may all your dreams come true

Ed Farmer wrote:New to the forum. Gimpy 60+ year old retired guy with a dream of being part of a much smaller, very rural community.

Okay, this has been insane. I just finished reading 25 pages. What a blast of information and help.

I'm aware of hugelkultur but just found this site and it has given me exactly what I needed to understand the subject in detail. Let me give a little background.

I have about 150 acres of high desert forested property at 4500ft. (Just about 1 mile long by a quarter mile wide) Not more than about 5 foot of variance in elevation across the property. Mostly second growth pine and small (2"-4") trees that have become very overgrown. Also a lot of sagebrush. Basically just neglected forest land a mile off the highway on a non-county maintained dirt road. Probably more than a few acres of old dead trees on the ground. Much of it is lightweight due to decay. I need to cut fence lines and a few roads through out the property. Winters are cold and the rare winter can produce 10 foot deep snow. Growing season is short. Summers, a high of 90 with significant drops at night. Maybe 15-20 inches of precipitation. Summers produce nothing but dust clouds behind vehicles. Dry silty soil. Going to build a real log home. Bought a bandsaw mill to cut logs into usable dimensional lumber for farm structures.

Now I find this sight with all the answers to what I have to do to make my property a place to live and thrive. The added benefit will be to make my property more wildlife friendly. Recently bought 4 old bathtubs to use as wildlife water sources. We have coyotes, a pack of wolves, bear, deer, elk, mountain lions, bobcats, badger, and an occasional run away lama that stops by. Plenty of 4 legged visitors to keep us entertained.

We have a house in town and have been dropping all our "yard waste" off in a growing pile over the last 1.5 years. Also recently acquired about 50-60 cu/yds of year old horse manure now in a pile on the property. Acquired a dump trailer and a full size tractor. Access to a small Dozer. The only thing I was missing was this site.

Now I can get started. Will have to knock down plenty of smaller trees for the fence lines and roads. Most will be used for wildlife friendly fencing with plenty of leftover dead wood on the ground. Plenty of slash I will produce trimming and limbing trees. The best part is about an acre or so seasonal lake. One that I had wanted to deepen during the dry season. Now I've found a use for that lake bottom soil.

Can't wait to get started and start posting progress and pictures of my first hugel creation.

Thanks for a few days of reading material. Very cool to see the diversity of members worldwide.

Thanks Joshua,

At my age, I have a long term goal and pace myself. As for digging in the lake, slow and only as much as needed for the immediate task. I am having fun as I start planning. But as is my history, my plans change with the outcome and as experience is gained.

Thanks also for the link. I will peruse it thoroughly.

As for roads, minimal is best of course. But after this property was split up, the existing road (one) meanders back and forth across 2 properties and that cannot continue. Good fences make good neighbors, as they say. So probably one road north and south and one east and west is necessary. I have to cut the fence lines on two sides to establish the fence. No choice in that.

I am excited to get to work. But have the benefit of time to complete the work.

paul wheaton wrote:I think I would choose to not use cedar for beds.  Even as a border.  Cedar is loaded to the gills with allelopathic stuff (stuff that makes other plants sad).  I think I remember that there are at least four specific plant toxins above and beyond the acidifying nature of cedar.

Has anyone ever actually tried using cedar or another allelopath wood? wonder what it might lead to...esp if you have the wood lying around already, might as well give it a shot as an experiment and tell us what happened, especially long-term! it might bea really slow-burn hugelbed that would grow bonsai blueberry bushes!

Hey just wanted to add a few shots of my hugel-garden down on the equator. We're at 3000' on a mountainside. The beds were composed of the woody, low-value regrowth that grew out of a cleared pasture.

So far planted to: Corn, Sorgum, Sunnhemp, Sunflowers, Chia, Lablab, some other dry beans, squash, clover, deervetch, hairy indigo, camelina, tomatoes, peppers, cacao trees (to be grown out and re-planted), coffee, and a fig tree for the fun of it.

Very cool. Nice pictures. Can't wait to get started.

My newest issue of Mother Earth News has an article on hugelkultur!!

And, it references Paul's richsoil.com hugelkutur article, saying you should check that out for more information.

Good going, Paul! Did they give you a heads up about that?

Julia Winter wrote:My newest issue of Mother Earth News has an article on hugelkultur!!

And, it references Paul's richsoil.com hugelkutur article, saying you should check that out for more information.

Good going, Paul! Did they give you a heads up about that?

I have a vague memory of them asking for permission. Neat!

I went back through the magazine to get the article's title, and it's actually in the letters section, page 10, titled "Gardening in Drought" and written by Julia Franke from Kutztown, Pennsylvania.

My husband and I live in Minnesota (zone 4). We're looking at purchasing a property, but the oaks on it are suffering with oak wilt and it has sandy-loam soil. I'm wondering if I could use them to build hugelkultur beds/mounds. I'd like to build the mounds on contour to catch water flowing down the gently-sloped hill. Is there an edible fungus (shiitake or something) that would outgrow the oak wilt fungus once the trees are cut down and put into the mounds? Would the mushrooms fruit through the soil on the mound (under other edible plants and shrubs)? I don't know if I'm trying to combine too many things: building loam in sandy soil, berm and swale to manage water, hugelkultur beds, and edible fungi, while dealing with oak wilt infected trees.

I'm in a very similar situation Miranda, MN, zone 4, tons of oak wilt, beautiful sandy loam soil.

The DNR recommends burning oak wilt wood, OR burying a tarp around/over it for a year and basically baking in to death.
What a waste.
Hugels are a better option and oak wood is great for it, I've built several with oak/poplar/boxelder/whitepine and although they are only a year old, it's showing great promise. I cover cropped them with turnips and radishes this year and tried a few choice spots with rhubarb(great success), tomatoes(some sucess), and squash/melons(needs work)
I also have witnessed 2 edible fungus types "fruiting" from them already, and I didn't even do anything but bury them. Chicken of the woods and oyster.

I'm not sure if they are out competing the oak wilt fungus, but I think since oak wilt needs spores to spread keeping the wood completely buried is going to eventually smother them. Just make sure to use enough soil on top and add thick organic mulch the first year otherwise they'll dry out. This thread can help with alot of questions.

If you have oak wilt it's not going away. It's kind of a fact of life in my area of MN. Sad but true.
Hackberries, any maple, and birch grow fast if you are looking to replace them.

paul wheaton wrote:urban hugelkultur.

Black locust surrounding rotted maple.  Then filled with dirt and a little soil.  And then a layer of moldy hay.

Would love to read/see an update on the sections with Black Locust! I'm surrounded by Eucalyptus which may qualify for the do not use tree type list... and I may end up with Euc donated, thinking about using it on edges to inhibit "weed" growth at hugel base where it meets non-hugel space. others' experience with using "blacklisted" wood?

This site..inspirationgreen.com has put a very nice collection of information about hugelkultur including some of the information Paul has also offered....you might like to check out this link http://www.inspirationgreen.com/hugelkultur.html

Aome St.Laurence wrote:http://www.inspirationgreen.com/hugelkultur.html

awesome, had seen this site before but that was before I began the thought process on eucalyptus and did not recall it was on the "might" be a problem list.

and today, I saw mushrooms growing at a spot below one bed I have eucalyptus logs along the base of about 4 inches out from the log, three nice little brown caps emerged... so. maybe, under some conditions, Eucs are not a serious issue for microbial activity...