Can I use flower bush roots in a Hugelkultur?

I'm about to dig up an old garden with about 40 to 50 roots of old flowering bushes -- mainly Rhododendrons & Azaleas. The stumps on some of these roots are 6" in diameter.  I live in a National Forest, so I should be able to get felled trees, but can I use the old bush roots in the hugelkultur too?  There's a planned 5' x 15' plot for a veg garden.  I figured I could bury the roots there instead of paying to throw them away. Thanks.

I see no reason not to use roots. It's just another form of plant matter.

If you are worried about them re-growing then make sure they're dead first... You can cut into the root and see if the pith is still moist or green, just like you would a branch.

Alternatively you could burn them to make bio-char and incorporate that in the hugelkultur.

I realize this was a month ago, but if you dug them up around that time and haven't disposed of them yet they'd probably still be drying now anyway.

Thanks.  I'm not sure if there are rules against burning in the National Forest.  It's been moist here, so I doubt that there is a high danger of fire.  I'll check it out. Thanks.

Pretty much anything organic can go in there as long as you cover it with dirt and bacteria so it decomposes the way you want it to.

Poison Ivy and Poison Oak and Poson Sumac can be in a berm. If you take care to not get it on you and bury it deeo.


There's only two things I regret with my berm designs:

1)I should have used FRESH cut Oak logs for the top of my berms and inoculated them with mushroom plugs before burying them.

2) I should have designed my berms with a gap in the middle, so that the logs were separated with an earth fill and plant taproot plants top/moddle to capillary/pump moistutre.\\


Only the lower third of my berms have dry season water.


I think I could fix that by building the berms differently than the solid pile.

And putting tap root plants on top with two sets of logs and a free dirt area in the middle.