I love how this forum keeps coming up in the searches when I am thinking about applying something new to my garden. I have a LOT of red cedar trees around me, also alders, maples, and some pines. I was motivated by what happened when a pile of branches (of red cedar) accumulated on our lawn. Our lawn is ridiculous, the previous owners I know took some time trying to maintain the grass, but we don't. The grass is CRAZY and there is soooo much of it. We have just about an acre or so of yard btw. So, what happened was under those branches, it was all brown, in less than a week or two. Super handy for me as the long grass sometimes makes me fall as it is harder to judge how deep it is.
Anyway, so I have two little 5x10 garden beds, and one of them was pre-populated with some potatoes when we moved in I recently discovered. This is fine, but I realized that I probably would like another one, for my "chosen" crops. My husband suggested we just "till" the lawn, well part of it, and just grow in the dirt. I don't like tilling, but other than that I think it is a great idea! We even have some OLD firewood that doesn't burn very well that I can easily just pile up and start a hugelkultur pile of dirt to plant in.
So that was a long story, I'm basically writing because the initial area that was flattened by the cedar branches, is now where I have a table, that I love and want to keep there because it is convenient. The area where I want to create THE PILE is covered with very thick grass. I do already have a tarp on it, but I'm thinking that it might make sense to pull some of those cedar branches (which were thrown in what we plan to someday make a pond) and then put a base layer of those cedar branches, I figure it will help hold back the grass while I'm establishing the garden with old firewood first, the cut grass, dirt from digging out the someday pond, etc.
Do you all think it is a good idea to use the cedar branches or fronds (is that the right word?) at the bottom most layer of my hugelkultur pile? I also have things like wood chips that I recently acquired that I was told are mostly maple and pine...so there will probably be some of those too. Reading this thread I think it will be just fine, but felt like adding to it just in case that was a bad idea...I am a bit of a newbie as my 8yo son would say!!
