New Hugelkultur beds- best crop for SOIL building?

Lots of context but I swear this is ultimately about hugelkultur- stay with me!

I'm building a house this summer and had to take down a mess of white pines and some scraggly hardwoods that were trying to compete with the pine (poor things).  The arborist said it was an unhealthy grove and a result of human mismanagement, and don't be upset about taking them down and starting over. Our awesome hardscaper managed to take out all the white pine and save a row of sugar maples that were strong enough to stand on their own, so we aren't starting completely from scratch by the house.

Adjacent to the build site is a retired red shale quarry. It's nice and sunny and warm and has zero soil- literally 3 terraces of exposed bedrock. The 3 terraces slope slightly backwards so water collects against the back walls, and on the lowest terrace we get enough water to support cattails and tadpoles and dragon flies- the kids love it. The balance is, in heavy rains the raw bedrock doesn't absorb anything and sends waterfalls down the hill into my neighbor's yard and sometimes his basement. (Quarry was there when he built so he's not mad at us, but we'd like to help mitigate his situation.)

So we have some major landscape restoration project on our hands in addition to a house build.

I have a pile of woodchips (mostly pine, some hardwood) the size of an RV and 3 piles of logs (big pine logs, and some small hardwood and cedar I'd like to use smartly) at my disposal. I understand pine isn't the best for hugelkultur but it's what I have the most of by far, and what I have the fewest practical uses for, unless we try to build a log cabin...

We're going to add material to the areas where water collects and treat them as wet meadows, focusing on native wildflowers and bushes that don't mind wet feet. I'd also like to build a few hugelkultur beds on the drier areas of the terraces. This will be a weekend and summer house, so we won't be there full time. Hugelkultur appeals to me because of the lowered watering needs, given our part-time occupancy.

Given that:
- the bulk of my material will be pine
- I will be relying on rain to water the beds and will ever only be able to water on weekends (Southern NY state weather)
- the beds will be built on bedrock
- I won't have time to baby the beds this year, or ever really
- I don't care about yield this year- this is just to build the soil
- I don't want the local deer to get the idea we've installed a salad bar for them (though our trailcams have never seen them in the quarry- it's quite exposed)
- I plan on trucking in top soil when we have the (raised) septic field built
- I want to help mitigate runoff


My actual question: What would be a good cover crop for the beds for their first year, to set them up for gardening success next year? Any other thoughts or red flags on approach, given my circumstances?

Thanks for your comments!

Hi Sarah,
How best to build the soil is a little hard to answer because it can be as simple as "go buy some compost" or can be extremely complex as you dig into Elaine Ingham classes on soil biology. Also, many garden techniques, like using deep rooted accumulators to bring nutrients to the surface are not as relevant here. I'm not an expert, but I will give some thoughts that I have gleaned from people who are experts.

Also, please remember that soil building is not a fast process. There are things that can be done to speed up the process, but it is still a multi-year process to get really good soil without starting with it.

In your instance, I'm going to suggest 3 areas to focus on. First is to increase the organic matter in the soil. With a hugelkulture bed a lot of this comes from the wood underneath. I don't have experience with these beds specifically, so I don't know if inoculating with some sort of mushroom would help speed up the process a little bit? From a normal soil perspective I would suggest large, fast growing plants which will create a lot of root structure, which will die back and add to the soil. Tomatoes come to mind.

Second, because you are essentially starting from scratch, I would suggest making sure you have a lot of micronutrients added. You can do this simply by buying additives... but if you are near the coast, many states allow you to harvest a certain amount of seaweed which has tons of micronutrients.

Lastly, you want to bump up the soil microbiology which will help make all the nutrients available and help with breaking things down and providing food for other microbes, etc. I doubt you are going to be using sterile dirt to top it off... but it might not hurt to get some loam from a forest or some good compost (even just a few handfuls) and add them in. Providing food for worms and microbes can also help. Some people might find it sacrilege to suggest a traditional mulch instead of a living mulch, but I have had good success with a form of lasagna gardening. Throw on some cheap animal feed, ashes, coffee grounds, fall leaves, dried seaweed (doesn't need to be dried, but my state limits are by weight, so I get more by picking the dried stuff), old hay or straw (any of those sorts of things)... and top it off with 4-6 inches of woodchips. When you come back the next year, I can almost guarantee the mound will be full of happy worms and microbes who, in turn, will make the plants very happy.

Good luck, and we would love to see pictures as you create these :)

Sarah Lennie wrote:   My actual question: What would be a good cover crop for the beds for their first year, to set them up for gardening success next year? Any other thoughts or red flags on approach, given my circumstances?

I would suggest if you want to build soil to look into planting Comfrey and other Dynamic Accumulators:

https://permies.com/t/138059/research-Dynamic-Accumulators-incl-Mother

sarah said, "I don't want the local deer to get the idea we've installed a salad bar for them (though our trailcams have never seen them in the quarry- it's quite exposed)

Then you will need fencing to keep the deer off the hugelkultur bed once you start planting.

Deer love any young tender plants.  They will also sometimes try unknown plants like onions, pull them up and spit them out.

There are deer-resistant plants though they may not be the ones that you want that might build soil.

I would suggest reading Dr. Bryant Redhawk's Soil Series for help with building your soil:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

Starting with this one:

https://permies.com/t/123928/Growing-Plants-builds-soil-health

Now to answer your question about cover crops, I like to recommend clover though I believe that is planted in the fall.

You might check with your local County Extension Agent for the best cover crop for your area for the time you want to plants.

- I don't want the local deer to get the idea we've installed a salad bar for them (though our trailcams have never seen them in the quarry- it's quite exposed)

That makes it tough. Two of my favorites for building soil are buckwheat & clovers. However, deer love them both. So do pollinators & birds. Attracting birds might work to your advantage because they will leave their fertilizer deposits in your new soil. Perhaps a thick planting of sunflowers might be a good starting plant. I've never seen deer eat them. Maybe deer would if they were hungry enough. Sunflowers could make a lot of mass quickly & later some edible seeds for birds or humans. Legumes of any sort might be another good option. Except for the deer concern.

Pine will generally break down faster than hardwoods (unless it's pine heartwood) but many people are more concerned about the acidity. It turns out pine is only slightly acidic once it dries out good. When the needles turn brown they are good too. I wouldn't hesitate to use either for hugels. It might be worth considering renting or buying a wood chipper to turn all the logs into chips. Deer won't eat chips but earthworms & the other soil critters will break them down rather fast. Add some mushroom slurries to speed up that process.

Since it's not your main home garden have you considered feeding deer then harvesting some venison for the first few years until the soil gets built up better? The extremely fertile plains of the Great Plains region were built by massive herds of buffalo periodically disturbing the ground & leaving their manure.

Good luck with your project. Keep us posted with your progress. Welcome to permies!

Mike said, "Perhaps a thick planting of sunflowers might be a good starting plant. I've never seen deer eat them.

We planted are big food plot of Black Oil Sunflowers for the dove and quail.  Unfortunately, the electric fence was taken down too soon, and guess who ate the sunflowers? Deer!

One plant that we have grown that deer do not like is rosemary so maybe a hedge of rosemary around the entire plot.

My Blanket Flowers aka Firewheels was something else they never ate.

Recently something ate all my Egyptian Walking Onions though the way the fence was broken down I feel that the feral hogs got those rather than the deer.

Hi, Sarah, you are on the right track thinking about building soil on hugel bed. I built some in 2019 and the first year everything grew great ( maybe due to the compost added) but they were going downhill ever since. My biggest mistake was assuming burying woods would take care of everything and not paying attention to mulching and polyculture like other areas of my garden. Now my hugel beds are the worse performing of all and I need to start building soils there. I just dug up some logs, after 3 years, only the outer 1/4 inch was rotted, an indication that microbial activity is low in the soil.

As for plants, maybe you can scatter some wild bird seeds mix. You will find grass/broadleaf
and nitrogen fixer readily in the mixture: sunflower seeds, sorghum, peas, millets and corns. I am not sure about deer resistance though.

Matt's suggestion about tomatoes is great as we have not had problems with deer and those.  In fact, all of Matt's suggestions were great.

We feed birds and can recommend the birdseed mix, great idea.

As far as I know, we don't have deer eating the plants that come up tough the rabbits and squirrels might.  Something does eat what comes up.

The birdseed would make a great first-year cover crop.

One of the purposes of a hugelkulture is that the buried wood help maintain moisture.

Did I see mushrooms mentioned?  Mushrooms are great soil builders.

What a huge project for you!  Fortunately, it all sounds fun!  You'll get a lot of satisfaction year after year as things improve.  

>> >>  My actual question: What would be a good cover crop for the beds for their first year, to set them up for gardening success next year?


No perfect plan, they're all good.  Everything mentioned earlier will be fine.  Clover and buckwheat, for example, would be great for spring and summer.  And the comfrey would be great, treated as a perennial.

Come fall, I think a mixture of annual ryegrass and hairy vetch would work nicely.  The ryegrass will die by Christmas, protecting your soil from erosion, then the following spring, the vetch will take off and take over with a wonderful mountain of biomass.  Then till or lasagna it all in, repeat!  

Hi Sarah,

What an impressive project!  I am going to deliberately echo Matt who earlier suggested getting as much soil biology as possible in your ground as possible.  Personally I am obsessed with growing mushrooms—Wine Caps to be specific—and through that endeavor I found that soil biology is going to trump soil chemistry.  When I have my Wine Caps growing best, their hyphae wrap around the roots of plants, feeding each other.  Since seeing that first hand, I have always tried to get the biology working before I even think about the chemistry.

With all that wood, you might be able to do Wine Caps if you were interested and they can only help the hugel mound—even if you don’t actually get actual mushrooms.

But whatever your choice, you have a very, very impressive project!

Eric

Thanks so much for all the ideas! Regarding mushrooms in particular, I'm worried that they won't be happy with the pine (the mushroom people say nothing grows well on pine, except maybe oyster mushrooms) and the location- on a sun-baked plateau of bedrock (though granted under layers of material). Totally worth a shot though, as we're going to do some mushroom experiments with a few of the hardwood logs (in a shadier/boggier part of the property) so I'll have the spores on-hand and this totally justifies getting the big bag of pegs If we get actual mushrooms it'll be a bonus.

I love the idea of feeding the birds- we unfortunately don't have as many as you'd think, which speaks to how mismanaged this land has been, but we are working on changing that.

May Lotito wrote: Now my hugel beds are the worse performing of all and I need to start building soils there. I just dug up some logs, after 3 years, only the outer 1/4 inch was rotted, an indication that microbial activity is low in the soil.

Have you thought of urinating on the hugelbed (or having a jug that you pee in, if there's no privacy on your property) to encourage the breakdown by adding the nitrogen in your urine every day? I heard this is great for compost that has too much brown, as well... which I feel like a hugelbed that isn't rotting is kind of like a compost pile with too much brown and not enough green? It also saves from flushing potable water down the toilet!! win