Can we use firewood bark?

We are in the process of splitting firewood for the season, red fir.  The bark falls off pretty easily & never burns well so we toss it (all over the place).
We are also finishing off beds in (& outside) our greenhouse & will be using hugelkulture as their base layer.  Have a couple of downed trees we will be using but - I want to know if there is any reason NOT to toss all my bark in with the wood & sticks?  We have miles of beds (well not really but when you are filling them...) and the bark will go a good way to helping build that bottom layer.
THANKS - oh yes, this is our first ever hugelkulture.

I see no reason not to add the fir bark to your hugelkultur beds as long as there are other log, limbs, etc from other tree species.

Hugelkultur is nothing more than making raised garden beds filled with rotten wood. This makes for raised garden beds loaded with organic material, nutrients, air pockets for the roots of what you plant, etc. As the years pass, the deep soil of your raised garden bed becomes incredibly rich and loaded with soil life. As the wood shrinks, it makes more tiny air pockets - so your hugelkultur becomes sort of self tilling. The first few years, the composting process will slightly warm your soil giving you a slightly longer growing season. The woody matter helps to keep nutrient excess from passing into the ground water - and then refeeding that to your garden plants later. Plus, by holding SO much water, hugelkultur could be part of a system for growing garden crops in the desert with no irrigation.

Fir trees might break down at a slower rate than other tree species:

Pine and fir will have some levels of tanins in them, but I'm guessing that most of that will be gone when the wood has been dead for a few years.

https://richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

Agreed. I see no reason not to use it.

Sure. I split all my wood in the same place,  I spread my bark down a hillside nearby and it breaks down pretty well. It would have to break down better if buried right?

Super, thanks!  I don't have a diverse wood source so the largest bits are all pine from a couple of last year's tree fells with a big leaf maple coming down this year being twiggy/branch bits and now I can add in the bark.  We may actually have a good base layer now - yay!

Dan Fish wrote:Sure. I split all my wood in the same place,  I spread my bark down a hillside nearby and it breaks down pretty well. It would have to break down better if buried right?

I read once that decomposing wood uses up, bear with me it’s been awhile since I read this, nitrogen in the soil. I often wondered how true as Hugie culture (like that? Lol) has been around for a long long time.
Hopefully someone smarter than me ( that’s most of you ) can cast some light on that.

I wouldn't add too many small pieces to the hugel interior because, as Don mentioned, it uses a lot of nitrogen. The bark would be more suitable as a top mulch layer. It is generally recommended to plant a large percentage of nitrogen fixing plants the first year or two. That being said ... I've used some bark & small twigs inside a hugel & didn't notice any problems. Maybe 10% or less of the total wood volume.

YEs Don, it definitely does. In some of the woody beds I have made (same principle, smaller scale) I have been suprised about the amount of nitrogen I have added, only to still have signs of nitrogen deficiency. BUT, you just have to be ready to add the amount of nitrogen you need. IT's worth it for the other benefits, I believe.

You can definitely use it! I use firewood bark regularly. Loose bark, logs that are a little too long to fit in my stove, branches, leaves, basically any firewood scrap ends up in the garden eventually.

As a tanner, I just want to weigh in and say that bark loses more than half of its tannins in the first couple rains. Unless you're working with wood that's been seasoned undercover, excessive tannin content shouldn't be an issue.