Mike's hugelkultur

Made one today with wood chips.  I came in about the time Asiatic mosquitoes started attacking.

When I removed the tarp to use to collect and hold grass + soil from my 25 x25 foot future garden (with some limping fava beans, happy cereal rye, plus garlic next to favas about 6 inches down).

I saw a new ant colony that established under the tarp.   Typical small ferocious red ants, found one japanese beetle, two orange type ~1 inch worms? and fed them to the happy ants.  Covered them with tarp at end of project.

Maybe I'll repeat what I did, and do another hugelkultur the same way tomorrow with the last of this batch of wood chips.

Rotting logs are by far the best thing to use for this I think. Good luck with yours, though.

Did a second hugelkultur today attached the existing one.

Today I used the last of the wood chips that were delivered for free.  Not sure when more will come.  It was a rough wood chip pile, I had plenty branches over a foot long, wood chunks a half inch thick.  I ended up burning a lot of branches and thicker wood.

I might be able to rake up one more bucket from lawn.  I got about 7 buckets worth!

Here is my completed hugelkultur, which was done in two phases.  The second one was not quite rectangular like the first.