Ben Zumeta

It seems to be used most commonly in conifer country of the Pacific coast of North America in reference to woody debris accumulated on the forest floor, or on the shoulders of large tree limbs. On old growth tree limbs that function as Galapagos Islands of evolution unto themselves, this duff decomposes to soil that hosts one of the most densely biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. A cubic meter can have 1500 invertebrate animals and 100,000 fungal species (Noss 1998). Duff is good stuff.

If in an area where drought is more of a concern than drainage, I would dig out the topsoil from both the bed and path area,  and set it aside for putting back on top of the hugel. I’d then dig down for both the path and hugel base low enough to receive runoff in major rain or snowmelt events from the adjacent area. If a level sill is not in place somewhere in the catchment, always allow positive drainage at the surface on at least one side to prevent a hugel from becoming a floating dam, which could be hazardous. I’d then start the hugel wood down in that catchment basin, layering alternating wood and soil thinly, then 6” of the best topsoil and compost you can if hoping for much in the first season. I would fill the path with woody debris topped with woodchips. This will give the soil a spongy and well aerated base for both absorption and drainage. I have a terrace with such hugels and paths that gets about 75,000 gal per year into the terrace soil on a ridgeline below my house. This has never overflowed due to rocky fill at the base of the terrace, but I have also never seen outflow from the sides. What goes down just feeds my aquifer and springs below.

I use artichokes for this in a similar climate. Fennel is also a great mulch, nursery, and habitat plant, but will spread.

About five years ago, I was helping harvest grapes on a friend’s vineyard in the Willamette Valley, and stepped towards the plum orchard above to drain the ol’ dipseydoodle. Not needing to worry about aim, I was looking around at the beautiful rainbow of fall foliage on the hillsides all around when I felt something land right above the stream, if you know what I mean. I looked down at a yellow jacket that must have come from the fallen plums just as it stung the worst imaginable place for a man when I flinched and disturbed its drink. Instinctively swatting at it and trying to raise my pants in protection at the same time, that just sent it into my pant leg. There it stung me on the thigh repeatedly as I tried to stop peeing all over myself while dropping trow again. I nearly tripped over half-down pants onto an old tractor implement while doing so, but finally got it off me. I was already laughing at how ridiculous that must have looked if I had a peeper. I figured it was thirsty at the end of a dry summer, but maybe it was mineral deficient. Surprisingly, after about 2min, the thigh stings hurt a lot more.

I think Anne and Christopher both have good points. If you go that big (10x20ft), plan for pathways and double-reach width planting areas. I have built some of these size or larger where we needed elevation above the winter water table at a food forest site I was hired to develop. I kind of enjoyed climbing around it, but it did limit accessibility for wheel barrows and less agile people. Sepp Holzer suggests building such bed as steeply as possible for less compaction and more surface area, but this does limit access.

In most cases I now do more double reach width hugel beds that would pass for normal raised beds.

The main keys to a successful hugel bed in my experience are:
- No protruding wood from inside to out, as this wicks water away
- Thin layers of alternating soil and wood to minimize vacant pockets that dry out and collapse. Bounce on it with each layer to get soil in contact with wood.
- Do not build a floating dam that could go visit the neighbors! Give at least 1% grade for drainage on uphill side.
- The first year, plant growth will be only as good as the topsoil layer, but it will get better progressively from there for the next few years. Give it at least 6” of good topsoil and or compost above the last layer of wood, making sure it’s settled in as well as possible, and it will likely grow well right away. If using poor soil, it could take 1-3yrs for the decomposing wood to really help.
- Improved drainage from buried wood is as much a benefit here as water retention.
- If at all possible, wait a full year to plant perennials that could not handle exposed root crowns (ie blueberries) from the soil settling around them. Be ready to observe for this and top-dress them right away if pushing it on this one year settling period. On the other hand, many trees actually like having their crown just above the soil, with exposed root flares being common in healthy wild trees. Too much settling though could destabilize them early on. So still observe and be ready to top dress trees, but avoid burying their root crown flare as this invites disease.

I would bury wood in any bed I build unless it was explicitly for non-fungal associates plants like brassicas, but I have also found my favorite brassica —tree collards— grow great on hugels.

To me, blame only seems applicable to those with free will. I am not sure people have free will. On the other hand, I guess I can’t rule out the possibility that worms do have some form of it. Regardless, we cannot kill the worms without killing many other species, so I would throw biodiversity at the problem and let evolution take its course.

Mart Hale wrote:

Ben Zumeta wrote:Other aphid predators include green lace wings, wasps (of which 95%+ are harmless to people) and brachanid flies. All of these have a pollen/nectar dependent stage of their life cycle. Simple white and yellow flowers, like yarrow, queen anne’s lace, alyssum, cilantro, fennel and other umbels provide easy to access food for this stage of those aphid pests’ life cycle. I had a marked drop in aphid and other pest and disease problems in year 3 of my current garden ecosystem’s succession. This was also true with other projects. The use of minimal nitrogen and always having it in a complex organic form has also likely helped reduce the protein glut produced by nitrates that feeds those suckers.

I waited a a season just letting these things go waiting for a predator to come eat them...

None came....

Trying to grow some milkweed now as I heard they were helpful for aphids treatment.

It will take more than one season for an ecosystem to get reestablished, as predators breed more slowly than their prey. 3yrs is pretty common in restoration for pollinator and predators to come back in balance with their food supply. I would just avoid interventions that kill predators as well as the pest, which it seems most sprays do (I had a homemade lemongrass spray that worked on mites and aphids, but also killed other things too). Also remember, even if its just hand crushing, if we kill off the pest, we kill off their predators even moreso, and the pests will still persist elsewhere and come back to a site full of food and devoid of predators and then explode in population. If surrounded by biocide laden land, it can be much harder, but those small predators are an indicator of what pollutants in that environment do to living things, with 10x the potency for every step up the food chain. I am lucky to be on the edge of a national forest, which meant native beneficial predators were around.

Other aphid predators include green lace wings, wasps (of which 95%+ are harmless to people) and brachanid flies. All of these have a pollen/nectar dependent stage of their life cycle. Simple white and yellow flowers, like yarrow, queen anne’s lace, alyssum, cilantro, fennel and other umbels provide easy to access food for this stage of those aphid pests’ life cycle. I had a marked drop in aphid and other pest and disease problems in year 3 of my current garden ecosystem’s succession. This was also true with other projects. The use of minimal nitrogen and always having it in a complex organic form has also likely helped reduce the protein glut produced by nitrates that feeds those suckers.

Sounds like a great LGD. I have been told that breeding female LGDs that young can be problematic for their health, but she will make a great mom one day!

Great thread. I think that how organic mulches turn into compost is one of the many reasons they are infinitely better than plastic.

I have spread a lot of woodchips (hundreds of yards) on my gardens and food forests, but seems like soil microbiologists (James White, Elaine Ingham, many others I have read or heard on podcasts) are getting more and more evidence that the best mulch is a living plant. All plants produce exudates to feed microbes which in return provide plant available nutrients. At least 30% of all plant sugars produced go to microbes, with up to 50% seasonally. When we chop and drop a weed, the greens provide shade and food for microbes, and the roots decompose and leave corridors of compost for future roots of plants we want to grow.

So I have come to only pull weeds when seeding or planting starts, with the exception of really aggressive spreaders like grasses, ivy and mint which I do try to get roots and all. Otherwise, everything just gets cut back with my brush cutter in late spring just before fire season. I use a sickle for right around trees and plants I want to keep.  I leave most of it on the ground, ideally covering planting bed soil. I do move some to compost piles because piles of drying cut grass upwind in fire weather is a risk to our house.

If I have bare ground in the winter for some reason, I will mulch with woodchips. I also use them in my sunken pathways between hugel beds. If a have a future garden or tree planting spot that has minimal soil to grow plants to get the soil sugar pump primed in the first place, I will spread woodchips to decompose and build organic matter. I use woodchips or woody debris around trees to get soil fungi a boost, but have leaned into spreading it less and piling it more since reading Michael Phillips’ “Holistic Orchard.” I have seen enough benefit and little perceptible harm in using conifer that I don’t worry too
much about it, but I will take all the alder I can get.

I think rocks make sense in very dry climates. Both plants and rocks help provide much more surface area for dew formation. If woody debris is broken down below 1ft/30cm, it generally gets enough soil contact to stay moist enough in the wet season here to inoculate with fire retardant fungi. In really dry climates though, it may just oxidize like was mentioned in a post above. Crushing this organic matter to the ground or eating it and depositing it as manure that then gets spread by smaller animals is a big reason why large herbivores moving frequently are so important to savanna and prairie ecosystems, and are essential to preventing their desertification.