Paul Wheaton's hugelkultur article thread

We've gathered most of the materials for our hugelkultur beds and I have a few questions...

While there is a lot of material that is older partially rotted trees of various species, a great deal of freshly cut trees will form the majority of the woody material in the beds. 

Most of the freshly cut trees are Oregon white oak and Pacific madrone, but there is quite a bit of Douglas-fir as well and a few Ponderosa pine.

I will be putting in some acid loving plants like blueberries and have set aside some of pine for their hugel-beds, but I will still have a lot of d-fir to use up.  Any thoughts on what kinds of trees/shrubs/veggies will do well in d-fir based beds?

As hardwoods, I am hoping that the oak/madrone beds will make a good setting for most fruit/nut trees.  Does this seem reasonable based on others experience?

These will all be going in zone 1/2 around the house and will be used for an arboretum type setup where we try many different types of fruit/nut/berries to see what does well and to use for propagation stock in addition to enjoying the food.

Our soil is a clay loam and the slope ranges from ~1-5% in this area, so these will not be tall beds, just a foot or so of topsoil removed and then placed on top of a foot or two of woody material with a bit of nitrogen to kick things off.

I have been putting the soft-wood logs (juniper in my case) in the bottoms of the beds, with the oak, hackberry,elm on top.  This I hope will give the cedar a chance to decay before any plant roots need to reach it.  The most rotten stuff I put on the top layer.

Here's some pics of the present kitchen garden:

Hugel beds with polyculture planting of fava beans and winter greens and roots:



Frog by a mushroom bed:



Another frog on a hugel bed:



New rock garden stump with frog pond:

looks good, Ludi.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be interested to see how it grows in and matures.

Thanks!  I seem to be growing a lot of frogs....

Here is a pix of mine from about a week ago.  The one I posted earlier.



I started a crop on it using drip.  I have had to turn the drip irrigation off of it about half the time once it got wet through.  The rest of the garden still requires irrigation, so it looks like it will be a water saver for me.

We are currently eating Zucchini, yellow crookneck, lemon cucumbers, beans, 2 varieties of corn, Armenian cucumbers, and lettuce with other crops on the way. 

Quail helped themselves to several other things as soon as they got above the ground, but it was still a success with the things they did not like.

Getting ready to start more.  I collected six 12 yard  loads of brush from one of my brushing jobs.

Glenn Kangiser wrote:
Here is a pix of mine from about a week ago.  The one I posted earlier.

excellent.  and Armenian cucumbers are delicious.

Looks gorgeous, Glenn! 

Thanks, Ludi and tel.

I was rather surprised that it produced so well even though I just made it this year- looking back I see I planted it August 8th. 

Seems the wood prevented the daily drying common in our clay soil and things grew rapidly.

The first corn was a 66 day variety as I recall - the second one on this end is 82 days or so.

Ludi wrote:I seem to be growing a lot of frogs....

I think that is a very good sign.

Hey Paul, do you have any updates on the Missoula hugelkultur project (the one being made in your youtube video)

How did the moisture level hold up through the year?  Inquiring minds want to know!

I live in the subtropics and plan to put in a hugelbed. Now, I know a lot of folks talk about the nitrogen that gets sucked up by all the wood. I recently just trimmed back a good amount of trees and am trying to figure out what to do with all the brush. What does everyone think about adding a lot of green mass to the hugel beds? Do you think that can help prevent the temporarily nitrogen poor soil?

This almost seems too good to be true. I'm going to try to put this to use here in Utah when I buy a house. I think we get a bit more rainfall than Missoula, so I'm excited to see how well it works.

Irrigation is a huge concern for me. I want to basically turn my whole property (which I hope to be 0.25-0.33 acre) into an edible forest. Right now, I have no idea how to do so without 800 or so gallons of irrigation per day. That ain't permaculture, baby!

I'm reading through Gaia's Garden, which boasts that people in arid regions like New Mexico have been able to create lush edible forests with very little irrigation. I don't know how they're doing it! If plants require an inch of rainfall per week, then that means a lot of irrigation for an area that only gets 17" per year (much of which is in the winter).

Hopefully, this method will help.

Is it sustainable? If everyone in suburban America created a hugelkulture bed, would it devastate our forests?

Also, how long does it last?

Is it sustainable? If everyone in suburban America created a hugelkulture bed, would it devastate our forests?

Also, how long does it last?

anyone who goes and chops down trees to make a hugelkultur bed is a moron imo.  partially rotten wood( which there is a lot of) is MUCH better to use.

the oldest bed i have is 5 years and its still going strong.

Soil, what if the trees you cut will grow back from the stumps, and were chosen because they had really bad form and were crowding other trees? And what if all the trees cut were within about 1600 feet of the hugel beds? What if you leave 3-4 foot stumps and grow mushrooms on them? I would argue that it is folly to take too much rotting wood from the forest floor. Unless you're speaking of another source that would otherwise go to waste.


Knarf, the beds can last from 10 - 20 years or more. It depends on the wood you use. The harder woods which are freshly cut should last much longer than soft woods or wood that is rotting.

Is it sustainable? I think that it can be but it depends on how you go about it. For first time hugelbeds I think the pinnacle would be to harvest on site, either from the forest floor, a coppice/pollard woodlot, or combination of the two, using horses and hand saws/axes. Either that or some free offsite source of wood that would otherwise be burned needlessly. Most of us will not have the luxury of the above of course. To make six 50 X 6 X 4 foot deep beds (reaching 3.5-4 feet high)  and an adjacent 50 X 5 foot trench @ 4 feet deep- I used about 20 litres of gasoline to fuel my ATV to pull the logs, approximately 6 litres of oil/gas mix for my chainsaw, and about 7-8 hours with a backhoe to dig the trenches, push some of the logs into place, and bury the woody debris. I'm sure this could have been done much more efficiently using the same equipment but it was our first time doing this so there were a lot of kinks to be worked out.

I think that for future beds I'll do them by hand. We made a few beds this way, digging shallow 10 inch trenches and piling wood about 2 feet above the soil surface, then covering with spoiled hay and soil from the trench. They performed well in terms of plant growth, and we didn't have to water except during transplanting, which was more of an insurance policy.

I think a key thing to ensure long term sustainability for successive rounds of hugelbeds would be to (as Fukuoka suggested) plant trees in a spot you want the beds in, so that when they are large enough, you can do a simple chop, drop, and bury. You just need about a decade or two...

knarf wrote:


Is it sustainable? If everyone in suburban America created a hugelkulture bed, would it devastate our forests?

I think the word sustainable has become a buzz word for the greenies. It's being used to control the sheep. Now we are supposed to question everything we do by asking if it is "sustainable". I know this because the politically correct solution to make any activity "sustainable" is to spend more money. Which always goes against any system being self supporting.


We all know that it would take an act of Odin to get 0.1% of america to use huglekulture.

Soil, what if the trees you cut will grow back from the stumps, and were chosen because they had really bad form and were crowding other trees? And what if all the trees cut were within about 1600 feet of the hugel beds? What if you leave 3-4 foot stumps and grow mushrooms on them? I would argue that it is folly to take too much rotting wood from the forest floor. Unless you're speaking of another source that would otherwise go to waste.

trees that are coppiced to grow back from a cut trunk are much better suited for other uses. it just seems dumb to me to waste perfectly good wood that could be used for something else before letting it rot. now say you have the logs you cut for growing mushrooms first, after the mushies are done i see no problem using the wood in a hugel bed, because you got a great use out of the wood before its left to further decompose under soil. it might be possible that i am spoiled when it comes to wood though, living in a oak forest we have more than enough rotten wood to use. but also, i dont think hugelkultur is the life saver of the American garden. diverstiy is best, each location will have what works best for them. here, hugelkultur beds work amazing to battle our extremely dry summers.

one source that i have been jumping on is 99% of people here set up burn piles for all there wood waste. i have been convincing people to just dump a load of soil on top rather than burn it, instantly creating a hugel bed for the next season.

"I think the word sustainable has become a buzz word for the greenies. It's being used to control the sheep. Now we are supposed to question everything we do by asking if it is "sustainable". I know this because the politically correct solution to make any activity "sustainable" is to spend more money. Which always goes against any system being self supporting."

Hmmm. I refuse to abandon the word sustainability because it is now being used as a marketing ploy by others. Makes about as much sense as abandoning the perfectly good word sheep because it is being used as a political slam.

 

Is there any consensus as to the pros and cons of making a bed with thick solid trunks versus a bed of brush?

I remember first watching Sepp talk about burying logs and thought 'hmm makes sense'.  But I didn't think to explore it further.  Then today I watch a video on it talking about unirrigated veggie beds doing fine in drought.    I'm listening!

Joshua, its my understanding that brush will break down and release nutrients quicker, and can suit plants that are heavy feeders of nutrients in the first year. Hugelbeds with brush will need replenishment faster than beds with logs.

A bed with only logs supposedly will need at least a year before you grow any heavy feeders. Some recommend to plant only or mostly nitrogen fixing plants in the first year or two.

I like to use a wide range of woody components. 8"+ logs, through brush, to woodchips. The full range of sizes provides a constant food supply to the fungi. I live in northern Idaho where logging operations generaly produce huge slash piles that just get burned (wasted). It is easy here to collect (save) stumps and logs from these piles.
I have an endless supply of lodgepole pine thinnings from my own property that I use to make hugel-terraces with. I haul 8-12 tons of grape pomice each year from a local winery that I compost with woodchips and cover the hugel-terraces with. I like to covercrop with yellow clover the first year or two to help fix N into the mass of wood. Seems to be working well. Hey! what about all those X-mas trees! Many citys charge ~$5.00 to haul them off for people. Permies could get together and borrow or lease an empty lot in their town and let people dump their trees there. Split the rental on a chipper and share the woody wealth.

Thanks everyone for the great info in this thread! I just finished reading it from the beginning and I am very excited to transform my entire plot into Hugelbeets!

I am wondering what everyone thinks about building these beds then immediately planting into them. I have been planning for the last year to transform my garden into a permaculture garden with keyhole beds and now that I am going to do it id really like all the beds to be Hugelbeets.

For now I am just starting the process of collecting logs/brush i have asked neighbors and gotten a large load of very nice logs off of Craigslist so far and plan to continue collecting materials until the time is right(soil thaws).

I also have two massive compost piles and about 200 bags of leaves that need to be composted  . Just waiting for a little warmer weather to head to my nitrogen source before they are added to the compost piles. The two current piles have been 150 degrees through all of the cold weather and little bit of snow we have gotten so i figure we are off to a good start.

I plan on using a heavy amount of compost in the beds when I build them as i figure it will be a good nitrogen source for helping to start the decomposition of the wood. 

Thoughts?

So, if we could have a betting corner, I will bet purple potatoes against crabgrass and other things of that weedy nature. 

Potatoes also store moisture.  If it gets dry above, the vines die, but still serve as flags for pulling to see what you catch, sort of the veggie version of fishing.  The looser the stuff they are planted in, the easier it is to pull out the stringer, or whatever it is you call it when you have a line of caught fish.  And the sea lions do not steal from behind you. 

Few predators eat raw potatoes.  Plus, the purple foiliage and flowers go well with other decorative things that might choose to coexist with the potatoes. 

It is rumored that pioneers bought roses west by embedding them in potatoes, which gave up portioned-out amounts of moisture to keep the roses alive in transport. 

If you mix in alliums, you've got good soup.  Garlic, leeks, and shallots are laudable in their ability to survive bad soil, cold, etc. 

Eat the bulb and bury the roots.  Even onions sometimes cooperate with this, though they are more finicky west of the Cascades in Oregon where I am.

I am wondering what everyone thinks about building these beds then immediately planting into them.

you could plant in them right away, no one is going to stop you. but imo you will get much better results with a good wait or some legumes at first. after one season the beds will be in full power.

i think it helps to apply lots of compost tea through the first season. everything they need is there adding lots of biology only gets things going faster. (which produces heat for a earlier spring crop!)

beets also don't do too bad the first season.

   I live on a very small property, so I am unable to do any significant beds. I'm a big forest garden nut though, so instead I just chop stuff up and disperse it around the forest garden. The soil eats stuff amazingly quickly - a Christmas tree that is dispersed around the garden one year is no longer visible the next. If I dig I can find branches covered in little fungal filaments. I seem to be developing a bit of a reputation because of this: a friend of the family brought his Christmas tree over for me to dispose of

Is there a verdict on the planting of fruit trees and bushes in hugelkultur  beds? It looks like some have said it is good and others have said it is better to have a tree between hugelkultur beds. Has anyone done either successfully?

I live on a very small property, so I am unable to do any significant beds. I'm a big forest garden nut though, so instead I just chop stuff up and disperse it around the forest garden.

hugelkultur piles work just as good in forest gardens. i like to put them to the south of trees to give a nice diversity of micro climates for understory plants.

Is there a verdict on the planting of fruit trees and bushes in hugelkultur  beds? It looks like some have said it is good and others have said it is better to have a tree between hugelkultur beds. Has anyone done either successfully?

i think it depends on the location, wetter areas would probably benefit from the higher ground a hugel bed provides, while a dry location it might like to be below the logs as to catch the wet soil below. the thing to take into account is that the hugel bed will shrink over the years, and if the tree doesn't have stable ground and a good hold it will fall over eventually. windy areas wont help with this.

I'm thinking  that putting trees in between beds is the way to go.  They create shade for plants that need it. They can send roots out towards the beds and will benefit from the juices oozing from the beds to the surrounding area.

my 2 cents

For those of you doing really deep hugelkultur, I would like to make a request for this upcoming planting season:

Please take one area of the bed and plant it with a polyculture of common garden plants - including at least one tomato.  Then take pictures of that throughout the growing season. 

The idea is that as I attempt to persuade people about the value of this stuff, the concept just cannot seem to fit in their head.  They seem to want to grasp at details to prove why I am a lying sack of shit.  With my recent video about the tomatoes in seattle, they focused on how the tomato plants looked withered (it was lat september) or that it was seattle ("everybody knows it rains every day in seattle").  If the pictures show a healthy polyculture, and it is in an area that gets low annual rainfall, that would be excellent.  Oh, and I'm concerned that some folks will think that some mystery plant might be the reason, and not the hugelkultur - or that the plants they see are all xeriscaping plants.  So I would really like to see pics of a plot that has standard garden plants:  carrots, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuces, radishes, etc.

Just fishing for pics is all.

Michigan Girl: take a look at Sepp Holzers video = Sepp Holzer - Permaculture - Farming with Terraces and Raised Beds (Part 2 of 4). At 6 mins 9 secs into the video theres a shot of trees planted in some hugelkultur beds. They are right on the edge of the bed. Not saying this is the be all end all but Sepp is probably one of the foremost experts about this subject alive today.

My intuition though, says 'wouldn't planting them at the edge of the paths be bad since paths tend to be more compacted?' From what I've learned about tree roots, they do tend to steer towards looser soil, so maybe they just grow into the bed and anchor there.

I wonder how he harvests from the side of the tree that faces towards the middle of hte bed. Are they dwarf trees that he can reach from a ladder on the path? Does he walk on the middle top part of the hugelbed? Anyone know?

i would think he'd probably just use an orchard ladder on the down hill side, they're somewhere between a ladder and a spear, you just thrust them into a likely spot an extend the third leg ( if you can) and let the tree provide alot of the support. i'd think even a full size tree on a berm here could be almost fully accessed. i'd also speculate that even on full size root stock (i'm pretty sure that's what he uses) his tree aren't going to get to the same "full size" the would in more hospitable areas, from what i understand it's fairly remarkable he's able to grow fruit at all in his location.

Here's a few pics of the January garden in hugel beds.


Most of the garden looks like this, a polyculture of fava beans, turnips, radish, lettuce, spinach, arugula, cilantro, chives, California poppies, sorrel, mustard and a few other things that may or may not have come up:



Planting of elephant garlic, egyptian onions, lettuce, cilantro around young apple tree:



Favas blooming - the bees are happy!

Gorgeous!  I've got to get some favas.

All this talk about hugelkultur has gotten me itchy to add a few to my garden. I've got a massive pile of rotting tree rounds (about a 12 x 12 area 5 feet high) in my backyard and I think they may just disappear this year. I want to build one in my garden and make it into a permanent tomato bed. What I may do is turn half my beds into hugelkulture beds (I have room for 16 beds at 4ft x18ft each bed) and leave the other half alone and see how they differ in productivity. I swear you permies are giving me so much more work to do around my permafarm! 

I buried one rotten willow trunk in my garden last fall, just to see if it works. It looks like a child's grave though. In spring I will start planting and observe closely how well it does. I will take some pictures.

knarf wrote:
This almost seems too good to be true. I'm going to try to put this to use here in Utah when I buy a house. I think we get a bit more rainfall than Missoula, so I'm excited to see how well it works.

Irrigation is a huge concern for me. I want to basically turn my whole property (which I hope to be 0.25-0.33 acre) into an edible forest. Right now, I have no idea how to do so without 800 or so gallons of irrigation per day. That ain't permaculture, baby!

I'm reading through Gaia's Garden, which boasts that people in arid regions like New Mexico have been able to create lush edible forests with very little irrigation. I don't know how they're doing it! If plants require an inch of rainfall per week, then that means a lot of irrigation for an area that only gets 17" per year (much of which is in the winter).

Hopefully, this method will help.

Is it sustainable? If everyone in suburban America created a hugelkulture bed, would it devastate our forests?

Also, how long does it last?

Good to see another permaculturist nearby. I understand your concern, drought and heat are major factors here.

Some of it is adapting to our climate and using drought-tolerant plants and crops and general water-conservation/harvesting techniques.

If thinking of growing maize, I'd think that the varieties from areas with climates similar to ours would prove more hardy and more likely to be drought-resistant or heat-tolerant. Some gardening advice commonly heard is also not great advice. Last summer I didn't water my tomatoes much (once every 2-3 weeks) and they turned out much tastier than if I did. They went through days of 100+ F weather just fine. Also, I planted them deeply when they were transplants, burying them about an additional 5-6 inches under the soil with tops out, so they could grow additional roots. By not watering often and when you do watering deeply, you will train the plants to dig deep and search hard for moisture and minerals. This is better for them in the long run.

Also, mulch, mulch, mulch. Makes a huge difference.

Hugelkultur has the advantage of filling the planting bed with the best kind of organic material. Woody stuff makes for a lot of humus, and a lot of humus makes for great water-holding capacity. What I'm doing right now is basically hugelkultur. Lots of broken branches, leaves, etc. collected from my silver maples, wood chips, bark, etc. mixed in with my clay soil.  So far the raised bed garden's at about 2 feet deep of this mix and being worked in its 3rd year. Every week I'm getting more organic matter and working it into the garden when the weather allows. (In the first year I had about 6-8 inches of mostly clay in my raised bed garden. Not good.)

My goal is eventually no irrigation at all.

I'm from West Texas where we have no trees. But I can get all the scrap lumber I want. Will lumber work? Will it decompose too quick? Does it have unwanted chemicals? How does one decide how much wood to use or how tall to make it? Will it make any difference whether you dig a hole or if you just stack it on the surface of the ground? Any good books on this subject. I don't like computers, need something i can read and hold in my hands. Thanks.

I don't know of any books on the subject.  I think waste lumber would be fine to use as long as it isn't pressure-treated.  The glues in plywood shouldn't be a significant problem, in my opinion, if you have a lot of that.  But regular construction wood like 2x4s etc should be fine to use.  For your dry climate I suggest excavating for the beds rather than building them on the surface.

Add me to the list of those with huge debris piles, happy to find a use for them. Neighbours all said to burn it (it's about 12 feet high and around 25 feet in diameter - remnants of clearing we did when we first moved here last year). But being new to country life we were intimated by that thought (plus it's apparently illegal in our district, though that doesn't seem to stop anybody). I'm going to read up on everything I can find on hugelkultur. Thanks!