Logs as raised bed frames

One of our smaller-sized pine trees fell over in the wind along with a big branch off our weeping willow tree.  I was thinking about stacking these rather thin logs on top of each other and using to frame in my mounded garden beds.  Not sure if willow and pine are good choices as wood.  I guess I would use rebar to hold the logs on top of each other???  Anyone think this is a good idea.  I created some mounds last year with some extra dirt I had for garden beds and I have some hens that I would like to occasionally patrol these beds.  They just scratch them all flat so framing them would probably be good.

That pine tree may serve well as compost where it fell...positioned on contour. I wonder how the rebar would fit into this scheme. If you need to buy it I bet there's a better alternative. The hens cpuld be better controlled in a chicken tractor situation.

I've seen various people do this sort of thing with success. One person made retaining walls for their terraces with logs stacked on top of each other. She used wooden stakes (bamboo would also work) to hold up the exterior of the wall.


https://www.tenthacrefarm.com/2014/10/heres-a-quick-way-to-terrace-a-hill/

I also remember Kai did a similar thing on Evan's Ant Village plot. Here's hopefully a link to the post about it: https://permies.com/t/400/45960/evan-ant-village-log#405371




Here's another person who made walls out of log for a very raised garden bed. She talks about the pros and cons here: http://joybileefarm.com/hugelkultur-bed-improved/





I wouldn't use the willow for the wall, unless it's been dead for a LONG time, as supposedly willows love to sprout, and you'd likely soon have willows all around your garden bed. The pine should work fine, though!

One suggestion I would make would be to make sure that the stakes you use are hammered deep into the ground--at least 2 feet. I actually tried to make a retaining wall this way for one of my garden beds, using bamboo as stakes. Since I wasn't able to drive them deep enough into the ground, they wall started falling outward. Also, fill your garden bed up to the wall as you build the wall, rather than building the wall first and then filling the bed with dirt (otherwise the logs will fall inward). Another tip would be to remove the bark from your logs, if you want them to take longer to decompose.

I hope that helps!