Horseshoe Hugelbed

I rented a wood chipper from home depot, and the blade was to dull to chip anything. Covering the bare dirt with woodchips was my initial idea with all this new wood I acquired. Since that didn't work out, I decided to make a Hugelkultur. This one I wanted to experiment with. I've used 98% Mesquite wood. Of that, 90% is green. Besides the time I've taken to trim the tree, I've put 6 hours into this project so far. There was enough mesquite to fit 2 full size truck beds. The two ends of the "horseshoe" go down almost 5 feet and have 18 inches of mesquite leaves. At 2 foot depth, the curved portion is shallower due to old trench from septic. It's still in the process.

This is the tree I got the wood from.

I worked another 6 hours today on this Hugelkultur. Very fun indeed.

Topsoil and Mulch to finish it off.

Looks great Adam. I hope it works well. What are you going to grow? Have you named it yet? I call mine Humphrey.

Thank you Mike. I broadcasted some bird seed. Then I transplanted a few squash, tomatoes, asparagus, flowers(compound and rose families). I have a tough time getting them out of those plastic trays, so I don't know how many will grow. I also planted 10 Walnut seeds I harvested in the Mountains along with squash seeds that did well last year.
As far as the name, I'm thinking Roger may work.

I didn’t realize you had steps going down the backside of the horseshoe mound, nice, Looks good, and functional. Interested in how it turns out.  Post future pictures of the progress.

Why did you choose the horseshoe shape? To provide microclimates?

Not much has happened with it yet Lojech. I'll post others.

Mike, I based this off of a keyhole garden to provide extra planting spots for different microclimates but it looks more like a 'u' shape.

Got a little rain on the 25th of July. First rain since I built this. 2 sunflowers were shading several black walnuts that were planted here. The watermelon is doing it's thing. Hoping to get a few more out of it. Lots of volunteer purslane.