Am I going to overwater my hugelkutur bed?

Hi folks!

So, having finally gotten around to taking out the oversized conifers left by the previous owner (I don't understand why people plant the damn things, it's all fun and games until that "dwarf" conifer six inches from your front wall remembers it's meant to be a tree and takes off!), I've got a big pile of branches and conifer foliage. The original plan for the three-foot-by-eight patch of ground I've got out front was to put a tiered raised bed in there, watered by the greywater from my washing machine, but now I'm wondering about stacking those branches at the bottom of the raised bed to try and get some of the benefits of the rotting wood and save me a trip to the tip as well.

From what I'm seeing online, one of the main advantages of hugelkultur beds is the way they retain water, as the wood acts like a sponge once it starts to rot. Am I likely to run into an issue with waterlogging the soil if I put the washing machine water (front-loader, apparently uses 44 litres per cycle, run twice a week or so) into a bed that's got a sizeable amount of wood buried in the bottom? I'm mostly intending to plant herbs and a few pollinator-friendly plants in there. Being in England we get a fair bit of rain in winter, and I'd rather avoid dumping the washing machine water into the sewers in winter if I don't have to, partly on principle but also partly on account of the way the (shared) sewer drain overflowed with soapy water last winter when too many appliances in the terrace pumped out at once... at least it was only soap!

Thanks in advance!

R

Be sure not to use bleach and get a good
biodegradable soap...

You could divert to the garden only when needed and back to the sewer otherwise. But that would ease the burden on the sewer and allow the garden to rest a little between waterings.

Right, I've decided to just go for it - now i've actually built it and seen that the bed's fairly shallow and the layer of wood and branches is only about eight inches thick, I'm less worried about not having good enough drainage. If it looks like it's waterlogging the soil over winter I can always take the advice above and start dumping half the water down the sewer, or into the mini-wetland at the back of the house where I already pipe dishwasher water. I get enough rain that I don't worry about the salt buildup from the dishwasher at the moment, and the plants don't seem to mind the concentrations of stuff in the water as it comes out of the dishwasher, but throwing more water at it to dilute the salt can't hurt either.

I forgot to take a picture of the bed before I put the soil down, so here's a photo of one of the big planters I've started hugel-ifying as well! The greywater pipe's going in tomorrow, and then I guess I just start washing and see what happens!

Sounds like a good environment for mushrooms

https://www.fieldforest.net/product/wine-cap-stropharia-rugoso-annulata-sawdust-spawn/wine-cap-mushroom-spawn

So, the greywater pipe is in and I've run a couple of loads of laundry, but I actually seem to have the opposite problem to the one I was worried about! The bed drains too well, and only one end of it is even moist, despite having had 80-ish litres of water pumped onto it by the washing machine over three days!

There's quite a bit of conifer foliage buried in there along with the branches, so my hope is that as that rots down (which I assume will happen pretty fast given how wet it is) it'll start to hold enough water that some of it wicks up into the topsoil. Until then I may have to use a can or the hose to keep the soil from drying out, which isn't the worst thing in the world.

William Kellogg wrote:
Sounds like a good environment for mushrooms

I hadn't thought of growing mushrooms... I do have a shady spot to fill in this garden now I've taken out the conifer...