Venting about my hugels…

I hate that I feel this way, but I’m starting to wonder if I would have been better off with a different style of garden.

I started out growing tomatoes and peppers in buckets at a rental house. I discovered permaculture, bought a house and immediately started making a garden and hugelkultur beds. It is now 4 years later and overall, things seem mediocre at best.

Year 1 of a new bed seems to be alright. Potatoes, squash, corn and beans all have done well in new beds.

Year 2 has been more about rodents and yellow jackets. They really seem to prefer 2nd year beds here. I think all 5 of our beds got yellow jackets and either mice, moles, voles or shrews living in them.

By year 3, the yellow jackets move on to a different 2nd year bed and then black ants move in and start destroying plants.

Oh, I almost forgot one of the biggest problems:slugs.

First year, I mulched the beds with woodchips. I almost immediately regretted that and so on year 2 I switched to old hay leftover from the chicken coop. It worked much better, until it rained. After the rain there were countless slugs everywhere. Different sizes and colors and relentlessly eating all of our beans, corn, basil, squashes, cucumbers and even marigolds…Im quite certain they had laid eggs in the damp hat bales and they hatched in the garden. At this point, its out of control. I try epsom salt, garlic powder, ginger powder, diatomaceous earth, cinnamon and just manually grabbing them one by one and whipping them onto the driveway in anger. All of these things help a little, but thats all. And most of it is completely ineffective after a little rain, although the garlic gets more pungent for a few days. The only thing I haven’t tried is sluggo, and I’d prefer not to.

Oh yea, almost forgot that I do know I made at least 1 mistake with these beds so I do need to take ownership of a little bit of these issues. I definitely should have made the beds more dense/packed more tightly. I was a bit careless I guess, and so now I’ll go to plant something and the soil will just fall into a void where either stuff has rotted away or I just didn’t fill a gap completely. The rodents love this…

All in all, they have been productive (compared to nothing because this is the majority of my gardening experience) and are a good use for common yard waste. But they are not a magic fix, an easy solution or a simple thing to build properly. Ours have been a mess and my only hopes at change are that over the next several years the wood inside and mulch onto will break down and make a healthy wholesome bed. I just never thought this would be a 5-10 year process!

I feel that using hugelkulture is only a tool.

It is a small part of the whole scheme of things.

I believe that if a person will work on building their soil health then hugelkulture is a great tool.

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

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

This is also a thread that you or others might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/175528/Long-game-clay-soil-fixing

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

For me the failure was all about not being able to dig out weeds that had roots wrapped in the logs.  But I planted a tree next to the bed and it has thrived without any watering or attention from me, while 2/3 rds of the trees I plant die on me.  Where it was is now a small hillock in the yard where everything grows bigger and greener than the rest of the yard.  

I think it's broken down enough that I could now easily turn that into a very productive tradition garden bed.  More than anything I see these as an excellent way build deeper soils. I haven't ruled out doing another one some day, but I would have to take extra steps to combat the grass and other pernicious weeds.  

Anne Miller wrote:I feel that using hugelkulture is only a tool.

It is a small part of the whole scheme of things.

I believe that if a person will work on building their soil health then hugelkulture is a great tool.

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

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

This is also a thread that you or others might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/175528/Long-game-clay-soil-fixing

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

We have comfrey planted near several trees and in a few different spots in a garden but I’m trying to keep perennials out of the vegetable garden. I want one spot on the property where things aren’t constantly trying to take over all year long, and that spot is the vegetable garden. Everywhere else is perennials. And I thought hugelkulturs were a way to build soil? So far, I think a ruth stout deep mulch method would have worked better for me. The spots in the garden where all I’ve done is dump woodchips for 2 years already has good enough soil to plant in. And no slugs in the woodchips. The hugels are loaded with problems and covered in slugs from the old hay. Ill be lucky if any pepper  and squash plants survive long enough to produce anything at all. Most of the beans and replanted beans are all skeletons now.

I will say that the whole year of observation and being patient is something I failed at. I wanted a garden fast and dove straight into making it. Never thought that it would be a 5-10 year process to get dependable soil when I could have just been “normal” and rototilled some manure and leaves into basic yard space and had decent results in a year or two. Or literally just cover the yard with mulch and have better results after 2 years than a 4 year old hugel bed.

I think a huge problem is that most people use too much wood and not enough soil. I did that with my first ones and ended up with some of the same things you have - huge voids, lots of rodents. They also don't hold water well. Actually, they're very dry. . Whenever i plant into those hugels, I bring a bucket of soil and dig a much bigger hole than I need to plant the thing I'm planting. I push as much soil as I can into the voids I find and top up from the bucket. Sometimes I fill up the bucket a couple times and haul even more soil over to the hugel. Since I started doing this a couple years ago, the beds have really improved.

The hugels I made after were done slowly. Partially because I build them by hand, but I also wanted to be more careful to have soil surrounding every log. So every layer, I put wood down with spaces in between, then fill up the spaces with soil, kitchen scraps, leaves, etc. But mostly soil. Then I get a good layer over top of the wood as well. Once there's 10-20cm of soil on top, I put another layer of wood down, with space in between each piece again. These hugels are great from the beginning and get better and better. I have fewer rodents and they hold water really well.

Perhaps at the end of the growing season you could use a sledge hammer or a vehicle to compact the hugel. Maybe add some soil on top after all the cavities are collapsed.

I totally feel your pain. Instead of slugs it was my chickens.  They removed the soil down to the wood layer so many times. I feel as if I have rebuilt that hugel a dozen times. I rebuilt mine this spring and have veggies growing on it.  I'm not one to sing it's praise. Maybe because I have to keep rebuilding it, maybe because we get so little rain, what ever the reason my hugel is just another garden bed for me. I have to water it just as often as all my other gardens, and being short, makes maintaining it a challenge. It's my least favorite garden bed to be honest.  I much prefer the raised bed hugel beet. They are super productive, and easy to maintain. It's easier to water as well.

If want to keep your hugel, could you get ducks?  They will take care of your slug problem.  Chickens would also, but they love to kick the soil layer off too unfortunately.

If you don't want the hugel, give yourself permission to change it.  There's no one answer for everyone.  If it's making you miserable, try something else.  There's lots of gardening styles, figuring out what one works for you is part of the adventure.  
Good luck to you. Let us know what you decide to do.

Hugelkultur are certainly complex. I haven't been recommending them for beginner gardeners for that reason. I do love that they create a lot of beautiful planting soil for use in raised beds! But it is a 7 year process. I am in year 7 and seeing great results from the many tons of wood and used animal bedding that has decomposed and mixed with soil. Will begin building raised beds soon and adding wood to the bottom layer but everything else will be traditional raised bed gardening.

Mine have been a mixed success.

I did 6 raised bed style hugels. Dug out about 2 feet down and filled with a variety of wood, then refilled, so they're like 3-4 feet from the bottom of the pit to the planting surface. Each bed was a little different. Some have collapsing soil in voids... some are full of annoying plant rhizomes... The thing I regret most was using round wood cedar logs as the borders. That's a real snail habitat. If I had ducks it probably wouldn't matter, but alas.

When the cedar finally decomposes in another century or so, I'll just go without the borders and do a more traditional mounding. Fewer edge loving perennial volunteers, fewer snails, easier maintenance, maybe more erosion problems, but there is no perfect solution.

I still get a few vegetables growing, despite the garden being in the shadow of the house 2 seasons of the year and me being highly negligent, ignorant, and amateurish about everything.

Jan White wrote:I think a huge problem is that most people use too much wood and not enough soil. I did that with my first ones and ended up with some of the same things you have - huge voids, lots of rodents. They also don't hold water well. Actually, they're very dry. . Whenever i plant into those hugels, I bring a bucket of soil and dig a much bigger hole than I need to plant the thing I'm planting. I push as much soil as I can into the voids I find and top up from the bucket. Sometimes I fill up the bucket a couple times and haul even more soil over to the hugel. Since I started doing this a couple years ago, the beds have really improved.

The hugels I made after were done slowly. Partially because I build them by hand, but I also wanted to be more careful to have soil surrounding every log. So every layer, I put wood down with spaces in between, then fill up the spaces with soil, kitchen scraps, leaves, etc. But mostly soil. Then I get a good layer over top of the wood as well. Once there's 10-20cm of soil on top, I put another layer of wood down, with space in between each piece again. These hugels are great from the beginning and get better and better. I have fewer rodents and they hold water really well.

I think I probably have too much wood compared to my soil ratio as well. And actually the base layer of several of the beds is cedar. I know cedar is “rot resistant” but these were old moss covered logs, bark rotted off, hollowed out and full of bugs, so I figured that they weren’t too resistant any more.

I also bring a bucket of soil or compost to the beds to use for planting and filling any holes and voids that I discover. Or sometimes I stuff them full of hay if nothing else.

Mike Barkley wrote:Perhaps at the end of the growing season you could use a sledge hammer or a vehicle to compact the hugel. Maybe add some soil on top after all the cavities are collapsed.

I could poke around to try to feel how rotten the wood is getting. If its rotting well, then I probably could smash them down one way or another. But if the wood still feels sound then I probably wouldn’t make much progress. Its worth an attempt though!

Jen Fulkerson wrote:I totally feel your pain. Instead of slugs it was my chickens.  They removed the soil down to the wood layer so many times. I feel as if I have rebuilt that hugel a dozen times. I rebuilt mine this spring and have veggies growing on it.  I'm not one to sing it's praise. Maybe because I have to keep rebuilding it, maybe because we get so little rain, what ever the reason my hugel is just another garden bed for me. I have to water it just as often as all my other gardens, and being short, makes maintaining it a challenge. It's my least favorite garden bed to be honest.  I much prefer the raised bed hugel beet. They are super productive, and easy to maintain. It's easier to water as well.

If want to keep your hugel, could you get ducks?  They will take care of your slug problem.  Chickens would also, but they love to kick the soil layer off too unfortunately.

If you don't want the hugel, give yourself permission to change it.  There's no one answer for everyone.  If it's making you miserable, try something else.  There's lots of gardening styles, figuring out what one works for you is part of the adventure.  
Good luck to you. Let us know what you decide to do.

Well, most of our garden (which is newly “finished” or so I thought) is composed of hugel style beds so changing that would effectively be redoing the garden which I’m not doing any time soon. If the wood inside them is getting pretty rotten then I could definitely make some changes though. Ill check during the potato harvest and see what my options are.

I definitely wont let our chickens into the garden. They tend to go everywhere I dont want them and do everything I dont want them to do (eat vegetables, unmulch everything, dig holes, shit on the onions…). We dont have ducks, but if I could borrow a couple just to eat slugs for a week that could be great. I do know people with ducks. Do they eat garden plants and kick mulch around or not really? I dont know much about ducks but if they want slugs then we may be able to work together! Although, at this point in the season, what the slugs have destroyed is basically just a lost cause for the year and they seem to be leaving the more mature plants alone. Last year they did eat corn silks though…

Hey Brody,
I feel your pain. I think your hugel bed can become productive given time. I missed how big it is, but this is what I would do ~

Poke holes down into it. A railroad pinch bar, six feet of heavy iron would be ideal, or a long crowbar, or piece of rebar... just make a bunch of holes. Then pile on a foot or two of soil, even if you have to buy it.
Then soak the heck out of it with the goal being to get a bunch of that soil down into those holes you’ve made so that it seeps in and fills all those air pockets and rodent hidey holes. If you can source it, good living soil rather than the plain old dirt that comes in bags will ignite the decomposition of all that wood down there. A deep flooding should also help drive out the rodents.
Top off with finished compost and plant in that.

I like your post Jeff, I'm going to try it for myself.  I always wonder how much water my plants are actually getting when I water and it all just rolls down hill.  I have been meaning to put some diy ollas in, that's what I did the first year, but haven't managed it yet.  Thanks

Jeff Peter wrote:Hey Brody,
I feel your pain. I think your hugel bed can become productive given time. I missed how big it is, but this is what I would do ~

Poke holes down into it. A railroad pinch bar, six feet of heavy iron would be ideal, or a long crowbar, or piece of rebar... just make a bunch of holes. Then pile on a foot or two of soil, even if you have to buy it.
Then soak the heck out of it with the goal being to get a bunch of that soil down into those holes you’ve made so that it seeps in and fills all those air pockets and rodent hidey holes. If you can source it, good living soil rather than the plain old dirt that comes in bags will ignite the decomposition of all that wood down there. A deep flooding should also help drive out the rodents.
Top off with finished compost and plant in that.

If I have a free weekend this fall, I might get into it and redo the beds. Im considering removing all the hay mulch and composting it. Then poking around to feel how rotten the wood inside the beds is. If its still hard maybe ill compact and add soil. If its soft I might mix things around a bit. And then top off with either fresh hay or something else for mulch. And yes, a deep flooding would help. I dont water much so whatever rainfall they get is about all the moisture they receive.

Hi Everyone:  I'm new to permaculture and my firewood guy says he offers a mix of walnut, oak, and almond.
But he says the walnut is not "black walnut".  I can't find free wood anywhere in Marin County (they think we're
wealthy, which we're not).  He wants to charge me $220 for 1/4 cord of wood.

Is it okay to put these three kinds of wood into the bottom of my hugelkultur beds?  I really want to do it right the
first time.  Please don't laugh at me, my insecurity about my gardening skill is at about 11 out of 10 right now.

Thanks for your reply.

Jen in Northern California 🙂

(zone 10b, but I like to say anything from 6a to 10b because practically none of my plants have survived.)

I think you're good. I'm not sure about oak, but I did mine with English walnut and Almond.  I have had many issues with my hugel, but not wood related.  I think I would see about finding a wood source that's free, seem like buying firewood for a hugelkultur is going to cost a fortune.  I live in Ca. Zone 9 b and my hugel is definitely not my favorite garden bed.  My hugel Beets are so much better.
Good luck

One of the most applicable sayings you'll hear a lot of in permaculture is "it depends".  There is no one sized fits all approach. Nearly every technique is both amazing and flops horribly depending on the circumstances.

What needs are you hoping a hugelculture will meet for you?  Especially if you plan to purchase all the materials it is a sizeable investment to set them up so it's worth seeing if anyone has particular tips to optimize results.

Hi, thank you for your replies!

I've got 16-inch deep-root beds to fill; that's pretty
much why I want to fill up space with at least 1 layer of
logs.  

I also do want to plant deep-root vegetables and other
things like flowers.

I would *love* to find free wood, believe me.  I'm also
looking for free wood chips, but the tree guys in my area
only bring like 20-25 cu. yds of it!  I only need about 2 cu
yds.  Yikes, right?

Otherwise, if I can't find wood I'm going to have to buy it,
and yep, it's a major investment.

Would love your thoughts.
Jen P

Rotting wood is good for hugels... firewood is expensive partly because it's been somewhat carefully dried.

If there was a saw mill anywhere near you, you could probably get their bark and outer scraps for way cheaper than firewood costs. They might even dump it for you. The sawmill guys here are really nice anyway, they delivered me a bunch of wood at no cost because I live on their route.

I bet your tree guys have will eventually have a situation where your house is en-route between a job site and their chipper, and a little negotiation could probably get the pre-chipped logs delivered to you. If they can save costs on energy and transportation then they're probably happy.

It may seem like I'm antihugel and I'm not, I'm glad I built mine, and keep on working to get it to be amazing like so many claim.  But yah you knew it was coming. But in our super dry climate the wood doesn't break down like it does in other places.  Example I have a pile of wood chips I got in September 2019. In a lot of places most of the pile except the top would be amazing soil? Compost? You know broken down.  My pile is only slightly broken down and mostly wood chips.  I have to water my plants on my hugelkultur as often as I water all of my other gardens.  This is why I wonder if a hugelkultur is the best option for you.  If you are set on it, great I wish you luck. Maybe ask your wood guys if he has uncut wood, or chunks he can't cut, maybe he would give you a deal for saving him the labor.  If not, you might consider other options.

It sounds like you have a bunch of roots in the ground so you can't dig.  What about a raised bed?  I used concrete blocks for mine. You could make it 3 blocks high that would give you 24" of space. The bottom could be filled with junk wood like branches and trimmings if you know anyone. Or if you don't use the wood chips.  I know it sounds like way to much, but wood chips are so useful you will be amazed how easy it is to use. Worse case you find a corner and let them compost to make amazing soil.  On top of the wood chips I would put any organic matter you can find, leaves, grass clippings, shredded cardboard, kitchen scraps. I would top it off with a good organic compost and organic soil.  This way the water will go down to the roots of the veggies and flowers, and not roll down the side of the hugel. I would suspect it will also help brake down those roots in time.

What ever you decide I hope you find the materials you need.  Good luck to you.

Hi Jen:

Yes, I'm wanting to do hugel in my 16" deep raised cedar beds.  
Thanks for the tips, I can't wait to get started on it and actually
get the thing layered in and done!

I plan for the layers to go in something like this:

1. big chunks of wood/logs
2.  chicken manure compacted down with wood chips to
    fill in as many cracks as possible and add nitrogen
3.  3" wood chips layer
4.  hopefully 2" layer of leaves
5.  compost
6.  soil and amendments
7.  plant in
8.  straw mulch on top

Thanks for the good wishes!
Jen P

My unpopular opinion is that permaculture advocates often focus too much on a few tools rather than thinking about the why and where of what they are trying to achieve in a given situation. Permaculture is a systems approach to agriculture/lifestyle, not a cookbook of patterns.

I've seen countless projects packed full of hugels, banana circles, enormous comfrey patches and herb spirals. All of these are excellent but they might not be the most suitable tool for your area and context.

If your soil is rich and full of organic matter, a hugelkultur bed might not be worth the time to gather materials and build. My raised beds, which are built from cheap, local compost on the highest organic matter area of my site (down wind of mature oak trees), store a vast amount of water and haven't needed irrigating since I built them. If I'd had a lot of rotting wood that I needed to clear, things might have been different*.

Herb spirals can be beautiful and may increase your growing space. However, on a large site without stones, it likely doesn't make sense.

My point is, a failed hugel might be an opportunity to pause and think about why it failed and to try and come up with an alternative method that solves (or attempts to solve) these problems. You might invent your own pattern that is helpful for others too.

* although, in my climate, this can lead to lots of slug + woodlouse pressure which could be counter productive. I also feel that leaving rotting wood for invertebrates is a worthwhile pursuit and, personally, I would probably have done that instead of making hugel mounds.

Jennifer Panicacci wrote:Hi Jen:

Yes, I'm wanting to do hugel in my 16" deep raised cedar beds.  
Thanks for the tips, I can't wait to get started on it and actually
get the thing layered in and done!

I plan for the layers to go in something like this:

1. big chunks of wood/logs
2.  chicken manure compacted down with wood chips to
    fill in as many cracks as possible and add nitrogen
3.  3" wood chips layer
4.  hopefully 2" layer of leaves
5.  compost
6.  soil and amendments
7.  plant in
8.  straw mulch on top

Thanks for the good wishes!
Jen P

I dont recommend using firewood in a hugel for multiple reasons:

1. It costs money
2. Its dry
3. Its hard
4. Someone put in a lot of time and effort to find it, cut it, split it, dry it and pile it. Rotting it in the ground seems silly.

I highly recommend finding some low quality half rotten junk wood somewhere for your beds. It will be more nutritious, hole more moisture, break down faster and have much more biodiversity than seasoned firewood. Do you have a truck, a van, an suv or a station wagon? Or a trailer? Or know anyone with some property? Personally, I would use wood chips, bark chips, branches, twigs and sticks before I used seasoned firewood for a hugel. Or even just piles of leaves, grass, manure and unfinished compost. But I think using firewood would be something you regret.

I like Brody's suggestion about using wood chips.

Brody said, "I would use wood chips, bark chips, branches, twigs and sticks before I used seasoned firewood for a hugel. Or even just piles of leaves, grass, manure and unfinished compost

There are also some other available materials that can go into a hugelkulture such as coffee ground (free at many coffee shops), grass clipping (free from neighbors?), veggie scraps, etc.

Here is the thread about where wood chips to get for free in some areas:

John said, "They offer this free. However they have an option to pay (between $20-80 per load).

All else being equal (mileage/travel time, etc), the person offering to pay will probably get served before the 'freebies'.

https://permies.com/t/39157/ChipDrop-site-sign-delivery-free

Great, thank you Anne and Brody.
OK, I will eliminate firewood from my layers.

One last thing: is it okay to use dyed mulch in one of these beds?
It seems it would be toxic and decompose much slower.

Thanks again,
Jen P

Jennifer Panicacci wrote:Great, thank you Anne and Brody.
OK, I will eliminate firewood from my layers.

One last thing: is it okay to use dyed mulch in one of these beds?
It seems it would be toxic and decompose much slower.

Thanks again,
Jen P

You’re welcome, happy to help.

I assume that dyed mulch is probably toxic but I dont know that for sure. It may depend on the color and the manufacturer. I do know that it isn’t free though, so regardless of toxicity, that would steer me away.

Between utility companies, tree trimming companies, municipalities and certain homeowners, I would think you should be able to find plenty of free natural woodchips.

Jen Fulkerson wrote:Maybe because I have to keep rebuilding it, maybe because we get so little rain, what ever the reason my hugel is just another garden bed for me. I have to water it just as often as all my other gardens, and being short, makes maintaining it a challenge. It's my least favorite garden bed to be honest.  I much prefer the raised bed hugel beet. They are super productive, and easy to maintain. It's easier to water as well.

What is the difference between your hugel and your raised bed hugel beet? (According to hugel things I've seen hugel is just short for Hugelbeet or something, and hugel bed is the English for Hugelbeet, and the original Hugelbeets are raised, but some people have innovated sunken hugel beds for dry climates. But I actually have no practical experience, have only read and watched.)

Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology.???

I dug into the ground about 2' for both my hugelkultur and my hugel Beets.  The process for me was basically the same. Start with the largest wood I can get my hands on, then soil, then smaller wood like branches, sticks, and stuff like that, soil, compostable stuff, like leaves, kitchen scraps, garden scraps, shredded cardboard, what ever I can find, soil, wood chips, soil (up to this point I have used native soil) then I add a good organic compost and organic soil.  The layers are pretty much the same, for both. The difference is for the hugel beet the hole is surrounded by cement blocks (doesn't have to be cement blocks, what ever you want to use for the raised bed part is up to the individual). It's built basically the same inside, but looks like a traditional raised bed on the outside. I had to lay hardwire cloth on the bed at ground level because a gopher annihilated my garden last year.  It worked great, I have worms and healthy soil life, but gophers can only get to the deep roots.

The hugelkultur has no raised bed border. As I put the layers on it got more narrow until it's a peak. Creating your own little mountain.  I'm not the person to explain the benefit of a hugelkultur, there's lots of post, and way smarter people than me who can do a better job with that.  I personally did it because I thought after a year or two It would grow great veggies without having to water, but maybe a few times in the hottest part of the summer.  There are a lot of other benefits, but that was what made me give it a try.  

My theory of why my hugel Beets out perform my hugelkultur is we just don't get enough rain to make it function the way it should.  When I water the hugel beet the water goes down and soaks into the wood helping it decompose, and do what it's supposed to do.  A lot of the water on the hugelkultur just rolls down the hill.  If I had to guess most of the water never makes it to the core of the hugelkultur.  My hope is if I keep planting, and watering eventually the roots help the water make it to the core, and finally preform the way I had hoped. Also while I do have to add more soil/compost to the hugel beet because of decomposition, and probably pockets I may have missed. But what I have stays in the bed.  Keeping the soil on the side of the hugelkultur can be a challenge. Getting plants to grow on the side of a hill can be a challenge. I'm pretty short, so harvesting, watering, and weeding are a great deal harder on my hugelkultur.
I enjoy the challenge the hugelkultur provides, and I still hope some day it works out. The hugel beet gives me more veggies and pleasure.  

Hugelculture warnings;

1.) If you are in a forested, non-urban environment, hugelculture is going to make habitat that will initially be filled with mice, voles, rodents etc, and slugs, pillbugs, creepy crawlies etc.  They will be populated with these things regardless of how completely you bury the wood with plenty of dirt/soil.   "Too much wood, to little dirt" will exacerbate this issue to the point that the hugelculture looks more dead than the marginal dirt you were trying to upgrade once the hot season arrives, AND the pests will be streaming out of it.   If you are trying to bury wood with clay that is in clods larger than 1/4" minus, the dry voids and wind tunnels are inevitable (if it isn't a sunken bed) and they will require tamping (or a decade+) to do away with.

Even though hugelculture can create a pest problem that ruins a nearby traditional garden area, it's okay.   Remember it's all part of the ecological kersplosion master plan that creates fertility rather than consumes it.   But it might take 5 years for the leopard slugs or whichever predator you need to show up : (  If it's fresh-cut 6"+ logs, it's probably going to be a few years before the wood is little more than dead space to the plants above.  

2.) you will likely have a much more productive hugelsperience if the plan is to put it in, come back in 5 years, tamp it down, and then see what you can cultivate.

3.) putting pricey delicious perennials in a new hugelculture commonly makes for rodent food and little else.   The experience will likely be less of a bummer if you plant perennials adjacent to the hugelculture, in well-tamped, well-fertilized and well-irrigated holes.   Drip irrigation + tilled area (hugelculture etc) =  root buffet/vole void

But if you'll be around for 5 years and your starvation isn't dependent on that patch of ground's productivity in the meantime, it's totally worth it : )

John Hutter wrote:Hugelculture warnings;

1.) If you are in a forested, non-urban environment, hugelculture is going to make habitat that will initially be filled with mice, voles, rodents etc, and slugs, pillbugs, creepy crawlies etc.  They will be populated with these things regardless of how completely you bury the wood with plenty of dirt/soil.   "Too much wood, to little dirt" will exacerbate this issue to the point that the hugelculture looks more dead than the marginal dirt you were trying to upgrade once the hot season arrives, AND the pests will be streaming out of it.   If you are trying to bury wood with clay that is in clods larger than 1/4" minus, the dry voids and wind tunnels are inevitable (if it isn't a sunken bed) and they will require tamping (or a decade+) to do away with.

Even though hugelculture can create a pest problem that ruins a nearby traditional garden area, it's okay.   Remember it's all part of the ecological kersplosion master plan that creates fertility rather than consumes it.   But it might take 5 years for the leopard slugs or whichever predator you need to show up : (  If it's fresh-cut 6"+ logs, it's probably going to be a few years before the wood is little more than dead space to the plants above.  

2.) you will likely have a much more productive hugelsperience if the plan is to put it in, come back in 5 years, tamp it down, and then see what you can cultivate.

3.) putting pricey delicious perennials in a new hugelculture commonly makes for rodent food and little else.   The experience will likely be less of a bummer if you plant perennials adjacent to the hugelculture, in well-tamped, well-fertilized and well-irrigated holes.   Drip irrigation + tilled area (hugelculture etc) =  root buffet/vole void

But if you'll be around for 5 years and your starvation isn't dependent on that patch of ground's productivity in the meantime, it's totally worth it : )

Ive found several of those things to be true for us here. But I do think a few of the problems may be easy to solve.

We’re adopting a couple barn cats to hopefully fix the vole problem.

The yellow jackets were non-existent this summer. They’ve nested once in every bed and I heard they dont nest in the same place twice, so maybe we’re off limits now until I make more beds.

I plan on removing all of the old straw mulch from the beds, composting it and putting on fresh mulch in the spring. Hopefully the fresh straw wont be loaded with slug eggs.

As for the voids in the beds, I’m not sure about that yet. I probably wont have time to do anything about it any time soon, but even if I did I’m not sure what I would do. Dig down to the wood (or what’s left of it) and then re-pack everything in tightly? Tamping worries me because id hate to make the soil too compact. We do have clay but not large clumps like you described.

Either way, lots of stuff grows well in them the way they are as long as the slugs and voles dont get them first!

if you tamp the spots that went to high and dry dormancy first (late July?) towards the end of summer/early fall here, you are unlikely to hit any clay that is damp enough to fuse to itself.  Meanwhile you will collapse all the wind tunnels and make a big difference in the rate of drying in the future.

I also know that because it tends not to rain at my site during the "growing season,"  the issue of ground airflow rate is far more pronounced than it would be somewhere that does get some summer rain.

hot tip #2: I have given up on managing hugelculture in this way.  Once you decide you have "enough" productive soil for the immediate year, the additions become a 10 year plan : )

John Hutter wrote:you will likely have a much more productive hugelsperience if ...

"Hügelsperience" --> I love it!

Add it over here to "Words or phrases that permaculture really needs!" and I'll be sure to toss an apple your way!  

P.s. Thanks Brody and everyone for sharing the challenges and setbacks you encounter.  I always appreciate it when folks are open and honest about problems and misteaks mistakes.

Jeff Peter wrote:Hey Brody,
I feel your pain. I think your hugel bed can become productive given time. I missed how big it is, but this is what I would do ~

Poke holes down into it. A railroad pinch bar, six feet of heavy iron would be ideal, or a long crowbar, or piece of rebar... just make a bunch of holes. Then pile on a foot or two of soil, even if you have to buy it.
Then soak the heck out of it with the goal being to get a bunch of that soil down into those holes you’ve made so that it seeps in and fills all those air pockets and rodent hidey holes. If you can source it, good living soil rather than the plain old dirt that comes in bags will ignite the decomposition of all that wood down there. A deep flooding should also help drive out the rodents.
Top off with finished compost and plant in that.

I have the same problem, too, with too many holes in some of my hugel beds. I like this idea and will have to wait until next fall or spring (because they're all planted for now) but will do this then.

Brody, I too have tried many of the ideas I have run across and some have worked well, some have sort of worked, while others are usually not talked about. Hugels are usually not talked about unless I am in a discussion about how many woodchucks I have caught so far in any given year. I have decided that, in my area (SW lower Michigan), hugels make amazing woodchuck apartment houses. So far this year I have caught 14 in my large one. If I even build one again I will line it with small holed fencing to keep them out. We use them as flower beds as most vegetables get ate before they are ready for human consumption. However, the flowers look nice and bring in more insects which make sure that our regular gardens and our fruit trees, bushes and plants get pollinated so the hugels are not a complete waste. In fact just last evening my wife called me over to see some very tiny preying mantises which had hatched out on one of the smaller hugels we have. It was an amazing sight! On our largest hugel we are growing comfrey. The plants are huge! They recover from being cut down quickly and are the last thing to stop growing in the winter. This allows me to use the comfrey to fertilize many, many plants including over two dozen fruit trees on our property. The comfrey is easy to contain as we just mow around the hugel on a regular basis.  My point is that even our failures are successes if we set down and think about how they can be of use. It was one of the first lessons I learned in permaculture. I firmly believe it. There are no problems. Just solutions waiting to be discovered. Those solutions make our life not only better but they make it more enjoyable.

Jeffrey Loucks wrote:Hugels are usually not talked about unless I am in a discussion about how many woodchucks I have caught so far in any given year. I have decided that, in my area (SW lower Michigan), hugels make amazing woodchuck apartment houses. So far this year I have caught 14 in my large one. If I even build one again I will line it with small holed fencing to keep them out.

My point is that even our failures are successes if we set down and think about how they can be of use. It was one of the first lessons I learned in permaculture. I firmly believe it. There are no problems. Just solutions waiting to be discovered. Those solutions make our life not only better but they make it more enjoyable.

I feel your pain! I weeded my newest hugel early this spring and was so amazed at the soil life I ended up taking a video of all the spiders, worms and insects crawling through the soil. I was super excited. And then a few days later holes started appearing all around and through the bed. I have now trapped 8 voles from that bed. The voles got fed to our kittens, so thats good. I guess i can view that as a positive, since they’re too young to be out hunting on their own. And as much as I hate dealing with the voles in the hugels and eating our potatoes, i would rather them cause problems in the vegetable garden than damage our fruit and nut tree seedlings.

It does seem to me like the first 2-3 years of a hugel are the problematic years. We get ants, hornets and rodents. But by year 3 or so it seems like most of that has settled down and the beds themselves have settled too and there are much less holes and air pockets in them.

My neighbor has a bunch of old, mossy, rotten cedar logs. I may dig up our hugels this fall, pull out any dry, unrotten wood and replace with the rotten cedar. Then rebuild the hugels but make sure to avoid leaving any air pockets unlike last time.

I agree that hugels are appropriate in some contexts and not others. I think NW California may be where they are most suitable, as nature has demonstrated with nurselogs they emulate. I have found they aid drainage as much as helping reduce watering, and help create more soil above water table for roots in our wet season.

While I have heard of people having surprising success with redwood in hugels, I avoid using it in soil for similar reasons I’d avoid our local, heavily tannic and rot resistant cedars. Other conifers have worked well for me though.

However, apparently many taxonomic conglomerations of North American tree genera, like “cedar”, “fir”, or “hemlock”, were made as the best guess approximation to what they were familiar with by European botanist-explorers. Genetics have shown that as hit and miss, with many “cedars” being only very distantly related. So maybe the local cedars to Texas are less tannic, but if I were looking for a sure thing I’d research that first. Best of luck!

Ben Zumeta wrote:I agree that hugels are appropriate in some contexts and not others. I think NW California may be where they are most suitable, as nature has demonstrated with nurselogs they emulate. I have found they aid drainage as much as helping reduce watering, and help create more soil above water table for roots in our wet season.

While I have heard of people having surprising success with redwood in hugels, I avoid using it in soil for similar reasons I’d avoid our local, heavily tannic and rot resistant cedars. Other conifers have worked well for me though.

However, apparently many taxonomic conglomerations of North American tree genera, like “cedar”, “fir”, or “hemlock”, were made as the best guess approximation to what they were familiar with by European botanist-explorers. Genetics have shown that as hit and miss, with many “cedars” being only very distantly related. So maybe the local cedars to Texas are less tannic, but if I were looking for a sure thing I’d research that first. Best of luck!

I think the cedars we have here are Eastern White Cedars. They’re definitely rot resistant, but nothing is rot proof. Id never consider using any cedar in a hugel bed except stuff that’s obviously lost the rot game a while ago. This stuff has been piled in full shade for decades and I bet I could rip the logs apart with my bare hands without much effort. All soft, dark and mossy. Looks like a perfect sponge to me!