Hello all, long time lurker first time poster.
I wanted to share with you a hugelkulture i just built into a raised bed that had a bad bug problem.
Backstory:
The raised bed was built with reclaimed wood about 4 years ago. At the time I built 2 beds, the first bed (north) was filled with dirt from the property. Mostly clay soil and then filled with leaves and mulch from nearby properties. The south bed was filled with purchased soil that came in the form of bags. This bed has a bug problem like you wouldn't believe in the winter time. I've tried all sorts of things from *gasp* spray chemicals to companion planting to adding a ridiculous amounts of organic materials like horse manure, wood chips, kitchen scraps, etc. Nothing helped. I talked to a past president of the California Horticultural Society in SF about the issue and they recommended looking for worms. If none, add them. But better yet, mix in some soil from the compost bin and dig in some of the clay around the property.
I should note: To make room in the raised bed I dug up the soil that was there I moved to the front yard and used as filler in another project.
So I dug up my compost pile (which was really just kitchen scraps that were dug into the ground over the period of 2 years [take bad clay, dig a hole, place a contents of a container of kitchen scraps, cover with clay and water. repeat next week]). The soil turned out great! I also got a credit on my trash bill for keeping kitchen scraps on property and out of my green container!
I put the compost pile into the raised bed on one side, including all the worms and not yet composted kitchen scraps. I then covered it with some more horse manure and wood chips and watered in place.
Last summer I grew Roma and Cherry tomatoes. The plants got big and put out a decent volume of fruit given the limited lighting of the spot. When the tomato plants finished producing in October I pulled them all out and went to town digging up the raised bed and installing wood logs and branches in the bottom. Lets start the pictures:
First photo is after tearing out the tomato plants (I left the basil plant because it still had good leaves) and digging up the roots and finding roots of my neighbors queen palm in the bed. grrr...
The bed also had a lot of rocks in it... must have come from the compost pile maybe? Weird. So I screened out the dirt and saved the screenings in my wheel barrow. This was probably not the best thing to do since it breaks up soil structure but I also removed a ton of debris that wasn't going to work in the bed - like stucco cement (we redid the siding on our house and apparently the contractors viewed the tomato bed as a dump ground? thanks guys), paint chips, those pesky plastic fruit labels, ground up plastic 6-packs - probably from all that bagged soil and a lot of decorative rock.
But what I also found, was a ton of worms. Little ones too!
Ok, so once the soil was screened to 3/8" I had a wheelbarrow of the screenings.
And I dumped the screened leftovers in the green container... the trash company can deal with it.
In the trenches I dug up I laid down logs, branches, tree limbs, etc.
They were watered to moisten up and then covered with the screened dirt.
I repeated this process 6 times (6 trenches across the length of the bed, except for the part where the basil plant and irrigation pipe was and ended up on the other side of the bed here.
After the entire bed was back together I gave it a healthy watering to ensure all the soil was damp and here is the final photo:
On my todo list - is to add more horse manure (something I'm doing today) and wood chips from a neighbors free wood chip truck they had dumped in their driveway. It is raining today in the SF Bay Area and the rain will help water all the organic material in. I'll keep this thread updated as time passes.
Cheers!
