Hi! I'm new here and have a couple questions. Very shortly I will be working at setting up an area anywhere from 4-8 acres with hugelkultur beds for growing vegetables. This will be a section of a 46-acre property. All around the perimeter of the property and in a few divisions, grows hedge apple. Much of this osage orange will get cleared out (at least a few of the hedge rows -- the outer perimeter may stay for awhile). At first I thought I could use all the osage orange trunks for the hugel beds, but now I realize osage orange has anti-rot agents. What advice can you give me on this? Can I get away with using the osage orange anyway? I do not want to compromise the quality of my hugel beds, but I also want to put all this osage to use!

(However, there are surely other types of trees on the property including oak, maple, etc. -- common trees of the northeast -- if all else fails, I could use those, though I do not know how much there would be available of that, nor how much of it I would wish to chop down...)

My second question is in regards to building hugelkultur beds as a buffer to runoff water from a highway. Alongside our property is a fairly busy road, and my intention is to raise earth-berm walls up along the edge of the road and set back about 15 ft or so, and then I will seed the whole area between the road and the walls with native wildflowers so that their roots suck up all the dirty, polluted water. What if I make the earth-berm walls hugelkultur beds? That way they might absorb any water that the wildflower buffer cannot absorb.

Howdy Zach, welcome to Permies. I do not have any real experience with osage orange, I had to go look it up. Sounds like it has a few useful qualities. good for firewood and fence posts, and might be able to sell the wood to artists. I was wondering why you would want to get rid of it?

My understanding of Osage is that it is pretty rot resistant. That does not mean it can't be used but just something to keep in mind when making the decision.