Paul Wheaton's hugelkultur article thread

Except that the biggest and oldest "permaculture" projects were done by hand!
From Peru, about 1000 years old:


I have resisted buying a tractor but pressure is building from my family. A few posts up is the pic of my HK that the pigs recently wrecked. Not sure if the could've destroyed it if it was bigger (tractor built) or if I had thousands of serf to help me...

Xisca Nicolas wrote:How funny is permaculture...
-> not moving the soil on one hand, no plowing...
-> and moving dirt with tractors on the other hand!

M Troyka wrote:

Richard Gurry wrote:Can underground hugelkultur be used as a network of sponges for channeling water to specific areas?

http://youtu.be/MOOHFKO6Xcw

Please help me out. Thank you in advance!

That, sir, is an awesome idea. The only problem I can see is that charred wood (depending on how deep it's charred) doesn't wick water like regular wood does (charcoal is hydrophobic). The deeper charred stuff you may have to use for biochar instead.

Also, kind of OT but what kind/species of grapes are you looking to grow?

The wood is only charred on the bark surprisingly shallow! In the video you can (sorta) see a piece of cottonwood log that is cut in half.

I have Catawba, Frontenac, Chancellor, Chardonell, and used to have some nortons and glenoras but those couldn't handle the climate.

Eric Markov wrote:

Richard,

You should probably do some tests with the type of wood and rot level you'd use.

Dry unrotted pine logs will only wick water up 2 - 3 inches, probably wick down forever,
never tested it sideways, but would imagine it wouldn't be too far.

Luckily I don't have pine to deal with Pine is more hydrophobic than cotton wood because of the oil content it has, no?....

I am hoping that the flow of water from the main bed, being supplied by that spring or arroyo, will travel down the underground beds. I hope its not too much water for the vines though!

Beautiful land and enviable water situation, Mr. Gurry. Think your idea could work.

Eric Markov wrote:

Richard,

You should probably do some tests with the type of wood and rot level you'd use.

Dry unrotted pine logs will only wick water up 2 - 3 inches, probably wick down forever,
never tested it sideways, but would imagine it wouldn't be too far.

I would be interested to hear comments expounding on thoughts about burnt timber in a hugel bed...

I have 160 acres of heavily forested pine trees in SW Montana in the Bitterroot Mountain Range. For the last 10+ years, I have used capital and muscle to institute major fire thinning practices, thereby opening the canopy and inviting native grass / shrub growth, etc, etc. As part of this process, I cut, piled and burned a number of piles of fallen pine (easily 100+ piles). Last year, I learned of Permaculture, acquired my PDC, and am now working to bring a positive transition to the property for decades to come (no more burning!).

Understanding the importance of observation in Permaculture practice, my focus has brought me back to the burnt piles of fallen timber, and what has developed on and off over the last decade. Most of these burnt piles are littered with the knobs of rotten, burnt logs that did not fire completely, a mound of left over dirt / debris, as well as an over abundance of 'lambs ear', 'thistle', 'mullen', and a few other 'weeds'. The question I pose is, can I use this to my advantage?

The idea is to plant 1 tree in each pile while guilding it with synergistic plantings. I was thinking of taking a shovel to the heart of the pile. Moving unburnt timber away, ripping up all the 'weeds' (green manure) then digging a 2' hole in the center. I would then back fill the hole with the unburnt timber (now rotten) while layering in the recently pulled 'weeds', and completing the effort with planting a fruit tree (or other). I then top dress with mulch, straw, winter rye, etc and let it go. I would then top seed in the spring with synergistic plantings to aid in moisture retention, nutrient accumulation, pollination attractants, etc, etc.

What do you think?
Will the soil elements already present, be in-line with fostering growth? I figure the companion plantings would aid towards any soil amendment needs... or do I need an immediate injection of something else?
Has anyone else tried this before?

This is a project for September, so I would appreciate any / all insight on the theory for pushing this forward.

Thanks in advance,

Tim

As to the charred wood content, I think it would it would act in the same way as biochar. The chunks or layers where all the volatile compounds were burnt away will break down last, which I would think would preserve soil structure longer. The only thing I can think that you might want to do is take a complete inventory of what has seeded itself in the areas in question. There are threads here on this forum if I am not mistaken that deal with assessing soil quality based on what "weeds" grow there. If you think adding something is necessary, I think you should consider seeding a soil improvement guild to enhance the choices nature is already making with a view to running chickens on it to manure it. You could do this on an ongoing basis, and as long as you follow what you know of guild design, your soil will only get better. I believe there is a podcast where Paul talks about a few major components of a guild to forage feed chickens the whole year round, something you could transition to if chickens were on your long-term plan. If you chose mainly shade-loving species, you might not have to cut too much mature lumber. For instance, mulberries are an understory species and drop fruit for three months a year. Chicken feed! Sugar maples are a taprooted species that engages in hydraulic lift, also loves the shade, and when they drop their seeds, guess what? More chicken feed! You get my point, and Paul's list is much more extensive.
-CK

Well, the hugelkultur has impressed me this first year here in Fairbanks. Everything that grew on it was rampant, even though I planted quite late. I'm going to have to work on spacing, because the potatoes have engulfed half of it. I haven't noticed a bit of trouble with nitrogen, and if it truly does improve year by year, some phenomenal results are forthcoming. I'm sold, and will be building more this fall.

Victor:

Thanks for posting these pictures- I'm going to download the series you've posted and share them with my inlaws. Before I moved here last year they were laughing at my wife's little organic patch of potatoes. I told them just wait and see, we'll see who gets the best yields! Can't wait to show them proof before chopping a tree down.

Joshua Finch wrote:Victor:

Thanks for posting these pictures- I'm going to download the series you've posted and share them with my inlaws. Before I moved here last year they were laughing at my wife's little organic patch of potatoes. I told them just wait and see, we'll see who gets the best yields! Can't wait to show them proof before chopping a tree down.

You're welcome, Joshua. I think hugelkultur is very useful in the far north; it helps compensate for both short seasons and cold soils. I'm stoked about it and can't wait to make some epic ones in the future. We've got 48 acres to plan out, and hugelkultur will be employed prominently.

Joshua Finch wrote:....Can't wait to show them proof before chopping a tree down.

Instead of chopping a living tree for this how about looking for a local slash pile from a logging operation?

Max, I appreciate the sentiment, but shouldn't you know a bit more about the situation before you advise a course of action? If the tree is in the way of the sun, maybe it should go. There is a really big Norway Pine in my neighbour's backyard just to the east of me, at the southernmost part of their yard. If I could, I would turn that tree into hugelkultur in a second, even though I might be limited to acidity-loving plants. As it is, my garden starts getting direct sunlight around noon. Then there's the American Elm in the northwest corner of my yard. Its around two hundred years old, a survivor of the Dutch Elm Disease that happened in the 60s, and it shades most of my backyard from mid-afternoon to about six o'clock; I would never cut it down, but I would certainly prune away the lowest branches, some of which are dead, which would give me full sunlight for 10 to 12 hours at the height of summer. So I hope you understand my point: you can't simply refuse to remove problem trees, especially if you expect any kind of flexibility in design or success with sun-loving plants.
-CK

1) There are quite a few trees on the property blocking sun from the south.
2) We don't have a truck/trailer and the summer cottage is over two hours away from here, not exactly easy setting something up to pick logs from a local cutting operation.
3) From what I've seen, almost everything is used when the Finns log an area. The national government sets pretty darned strict controls for logging (as trees and fresh water are main national resources..and rocks..)- what I've seen as "left over" seems to actually be brought back onto the site to decompose. I could be wrong on that. I've brought up coppicing a few times and have been met with "Why would we go through the effort, we have so many trees?" I'm still going to design in coppicing as it makes more sense than selecting trees from the site for firewood, even though it is not part of the culture.
4) Relating to #1, we have so many trees here. We will be selecting appropriate trees- definitely nothing fully grown as they are quite large. I don't see anything wrong with thinning trees blocking our light as Chris Kott mentions.

Would anyone have experience using Balsam fir in hugelculture. It's a very resinous weed tree and I have 2 that have died outside my front door due to weather stress this year. It is just too messy for firewood and no use at all as structural timber.

Max Kennedy wrote:Would anyone have experience using Balsam fir in hugelculture. It's a very resinous weed tree and I have 2 that have died outside my front door due to weather stress this year. It is just too messy for firewood and no use at all as structural timber.

The biggest problem you might have with it is the acidity. Balsam fir is very acid even compared to other conifers. You might want to lime the beds to neutralize them and allow the balsam to break down rather than ambering.

Sepp Holzer notes in his book that acidic woods (conifers) are not a problem as long as they are added to the bed as bulk material. There only seems to be a problem if you use chipped wood. This makes since as the surface area of bulk wood is much less than that of chipped wood and so the potentially negative interactions between soil, roots and wood are minimilized. I don't have personal experience on this subject but a few people on the forum have used conifers for their beds without noticeable problems. Perhaps they can give their opinion on the matter.

Chris Kott wrote:Max, I appreciate the sentiment, but shouldn't you know a bit more about the situation before you advise a course of action? If the tree is in the way of the sun, maybe it should go. There is a really big Norway Pine in my neighbour's backyard just to the east of me, at the southernmost part of their yard.

Understand the desire to remove for sunlight but even so that still sounds like a low use for the tree. If you can finagle taking it down great but it would have more value as timber and slash is left to rot anyway so why not use it for what is going to happen to it in any case. You may not need the timber right now but it can almost be guaranteed to be useful in the future or at least sold for some cash. Hate seeing something useful just rotted away. Due to intermixing of branches with an adjacent tree I at 1st thought one of the dead balsams I was a black spruce and was going to timber it. It is of course your choice, I just have to work on waste not want not. There is never enough.

Max

The balsam won't be chipped James, thanks for the info.

Sorry, that I sneak in the Hügelkultur thread sideways... I was very long inactive here.
I do Hügelkultur and I tried different approaches. The first was digging a hole first to remove the topsoil.
Unfortunately oour garden is fill and there is not much of a topsoil that was only breaking my back and not much of a topsoil only
the backside of the grassods. I really prefer to rot them down a bit before using otherwise I'll have an eternal battle against the grass.
The second drawback was the if you are on fill, you leave the stuff better were it is otherwise you will dig up tons of crap.
Now I'm doing Hügelbeds as a raised bed system and lay cardboard underneath to kill the grass. I advance three times faster than before when I dug holes.

Now comes the problem: I have even less soil to put on the top than before (there wasn't a lot before). I think I must buy in some stuff. But I don't really know how to get a good mix without breaking the bank. Our landscaper sells "soil" that means dead stuff without organic matter for $35/ton, veggie mix for over $50/ton, mushroom compost for $50/m³ and sand which is cheaper. That means I would have to use the materials mentioned above. We have no compost as we are building everything straight away into our beds.

I did one bed recently with soil I had but, as it is not very much it is not the usual Hügelbeet shape, moer like a raised bed and it is not very stable. I use mostly gumtree and then a good layer of grass and then leaves when I have and then earth whatever I have.

Max Kennedy wrote: Hate seeing something useful just rotted away.

It's not just rotting away. It's being useful as part of a HK!

Often the trees that get cut don't have cash value as timber, that's why they're cut to make room for the valuable trees. If I understood the Geoff Lawton clips on youtube, lots of trees are planted when establishing a food forest with the understanding that 90% will be cut down. When you start out with a forest you're ahead of the game time-wise but you must selectively cut down the excess trees in order for the valuable trees to flourish.

I have ground pine shavings, collected from horse stalls, as a primary component of my HK. I chose them because I am using the HK as a flood control measure so I need the extra surface area exposed by the small particle size of the wood.

My HK and the plants/fungi growing in it have not had any adverse reaction to the high pine content.

However it should be noted, I let the wood age for about a year before using it.

I just recently learned about this method and completed my first one and am starting a second. I have decent video equipment and recorded the action. Below is a link to my Youtube Channel page where I put a series of short videos together (when you see an ending, it will automatically connect you to the next video). Click on the hubelkultur label. I plan to use my hugelkulturs for blueberrys, primarily.

http://www.youtube.com/user/sevenmmm/videos?view=1

I plan to go back and read this whole thread!

I have never heard of this before but it sounds like a great idea. Does anyone have experience planing trees on or near Hugelkultur beds? On the property I bought this past spring the former owners clear cut the ridge about 5 years ago and left the trees were they lay... don't ask me why but they will make great Hugelkultur beds!!

Not sure planting tree's on hugelculture would be a good idea until the rot is well along. The degradation organisms would be specialized to attack wood and you could be asking for tree diseases. Just a thought.

I think exposure like this is important:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/07/hugelkultur-permaculture-gardening-alys-fowler

Those are already old logs, and as long as the species of dead stuff isn't related to the living stuff it wouldn't be a problem. A more of less square raft would be good for planting a tree on top of, but you'd probably need to plant some onions/carrots/potatoes/other root crops a year before planting the tree in order to help break up some of the material so the tree's roots can grow. Apparently corn will complain as well if you try to stick it straight on top of hugel made from full logs.

EDIT: @paula you can do quite well mulching it down with leaf litter, pulled up weeds, and whatever other stuff you can get your hands on. Dirt isn't 100% necessary although it helps. Personally I would go for the cheap stuff, but on the other hand I would bet the delivery cost of that dirt will probably be more than what you pay for the dirt itself. I'd look into that before making a decision. You also don't really need to bury your wood under a mount of dirt, either; just a little sprinkling on top is enough to keep the stuff wet so it will break down and attract worms. Of course with large logs worms have a harder time than with small stuff.

So I harvested the hugelbed the other day. Everything did pretty good, considering I planted late, but the spuds were amazing. Two Yukon Golds just about make a five pound bag! The Swedish Peanuts are usually about 3" long; the hugel-grown specimens are 8-9". Got some scab, but these are the largest potatoes I've ever grown. Two Romanesco zucchini plants produced loads of huge squash that remained tender despite their gargantuan proportions. Also harvested some nice beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and some brassicas. Will definitely be constructing more beds.

well ive heard of softball sized potatoes in alaska before, HUGE produce up in your area so just for you :p :p :p :p

but yes those are AMAZING, 2.5 lbs kinda blows me away lol

I've just started digging out a space for hugelbeds and had a couple questions. I seem to have read that it's goof to make a border of stones around the bed. Is that to keep grasses from growing up into it, or for heat production? Ans is it recommended to add manure to the bed, and if so, how much in ratio to top soil? And I've seen photos of straw, leaves and woodchips covering the beds. I'm guessing all are good things, if you can get enough of them. I have lots of cow manure but I don't want to over do it.

@Kevin: I think the main purpose of using rocks is to keep the hugel bed from falling apart. Small material can have a tendency to wash out of the sides, and parts can erode if they experience a lot of water flow. While you can use straw, wood chips, and so on to cover hugel beds, weeds and anything else you can get ahold of also works well. I'd go easy on the manure; only use a sprinkling over the mulchy stuff on the beds, then cover the rest with topsoil. A lot of people make a big mound of dirt, but it isn't necessary.

@Victor: Woah. Did you innoculate those? Can you show us some pics of the beds themselves? I'm curious to see what yours look like that produced potatoes like that..

M Troyka wrote:@Victor: Woah. Did you innoculate those? Can you show us some pics of the beds themselves? I'm curious to see what yours look like that produced potatoes like that..

No inoculation; just hugel power! I'm really impressed with the performance and will definitely be building more. I have 5'x20' plots and converted one into a hugelbed; it's 3-4 feet high. I planted the spuds near the top on the east side; the vines rambled down the side and were 7-8 feet long by end of season. There are pictures throughout this thread of the bed under construction and growing; here's one post-harvest:

Victor, how old was that hugelbed when you harvested those?

I built it last fall--this was the first crop. If it's true that they get better with time, this is going to be phenomenal!

collecting materials...

Tel, I thought that pine wasn't very good for hugelkultur.

Kevin MacBearach wrote:Tel, I thought that pine wasn't very good for hugelkultur.

Apparently except for a few exceptionally stubborn species, pine is fine. However, I've never seen a pine tree with "crinkled" bark like the logs in his pic, I'm pretty sure those are hardwood.

Also, those are some big slices. Oughta make an awesome hugel-pad.

Kevin MacBearach wrote:Tel, I thought that pine wasn't very good for hugelkultur.

M Troyka's got a good eye: those are cottonwood rounds. averaging 500 pounds each, and we're getting closer to the big end...

cottonwood is the main ingredient in the hugelkulturs i built this year, havent done any excavations by any means but so far this year the hugelbed(in its 1st yr btw) has done much better than surrounding areas when left unwatered in heat of the summer

also of the logs i have yet to bury, one has some cool mushrooms coming out of the center and the pile provides a lot of wild bird habitat...

I have a little naive question...

How can hugelkultur works, when you know from BRF info that it is advised to NEVER bury any piece of the chopped wood!?!

Xisca Nicolas wrote:I have a little naive question...

How can hugelkultur works, when you know from BRF info that it is advised to NEVER bury any piece of the chopped wood!?!

I'm not familiar with BRF. at least, I'm not familiar with the acronym.

Chopped wood isn't the same as whole logs...

Xisca Nicolas wrote:
How can hugelkultur works, when you know from BRF info that it is advised to NEVER bury any piece of the chopped wood!?!