Raised Bed hugelkutur

Morning everyone.
My first post. 76 yo mid Missouri woods.
Me and misses live on 30 acres of land 90% wood. All soils is rock and clay, in fact story goes one time a quarry was planned fir here .

As a result I have about 6 inches at best of top soil before hitting the clay and rock.

I am trying to improve and use what I have . As a consequence I have cut up some old pole barn steel roof panels band build some raised beds- 10’ long- 18” deep and 30” wide. Why 30” wide ? I put removable end section on and that is width of my tiller.

In the bottom I went thru the woods and collected wood fall that has started to decompose, followed by smaller  branches.

We heat with wood and I have a chipper that makes good much of any branches up to 3 inches, chips come out less than an inch square and a 1/4 think.
I replace in all the flower beds each year and by spring it is easily have composted.
That’s what  in  the beds next followed by the meager top soil.

I am interested in what you all think. This is first summer so ‘we’ll see what happens .

Here is what they look like.

In any case I am happy to have found you.  As for my outlook.

DennyT


Ps. If I have bad spelling or typos forgive me . All I have is a small iphone8. No connectivity in my part of the woods

I tried to go the conventional way but could not get more  than 6-8 inches deep with shovel or tiller . To give you an feel for how rocky it is- the whole area is about 30x30 and here is the rock I got out of it in the top 10 inches .
This doesn’t show the really big one ( 3 ft around )in the middle that I may put a strawberry pyramid ( once again with reused roof panels)

This is my first foray into building a Hugelkutur bed. I used the following steps:

   1. Doug out 2’ of planting soil of existing raised bed.
   2. Laid down layer of rotting tree trunks.
   3. Watered.
   4. Added large to smaller branches.
   5. Added thin layers of dead leaves.
   6. Watered.
   7. Added 2” of two year old horse manure.
   8. Topped with original soil.
   9. Added layer of compost.
   10. Topped with original soil.
   11. Watered.
   12. Added layer of wood chips.
   13. Watered.

Hope you have a wonderful yield.