Hügelkultur Raised Beds

[gtaus]

New YouTube Video on Hügelkultur Raised Bed 3 Year Inspection

Just came across this video that was posted in the last month on The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni. He tears apart a 3-year-old hügelkultur raised bed to look at the progress of the logs he buried in the bed. He was very happy with the results. I think the whole video is worth watching, but I have linked this video to the section where he starts to pull out and look at the buried logs in the bed.

One thing I noticed was that he said annuals do best with 12-18 inches of soil depth. My raised bed gardens are only 16 inches high to begin with, and after putting in the hügelkultur logs and sticks, I have about 6-8 inches of topsoil/compost to fill the raised bed. That's a whole lot less than 12-18 inches of soil. But I seem to have great results.

I am wondering if the roots continue to grow down through the log layer and into the ground level soil if they need? I don't have any physical barrier between my logs and the ground soil. So, there is nothing to prevent a root from growing down into the ground level soil.

Also, each year I am adding 1-2 inches of fresh compost to the top of my raised beds, so I am thinking that over time (years) my soil depth in the raised bed must be expanding as the logs decay underneath. I guess a deeper soil base would be a good thing.

Well, based on my results, I am not too concerned that I might only have 8 inches of topsoil/compost in the top of my hügelkultur raised beds. But I would love to hear any feedback from other gardeners on how much soil you put in your raised beds and if you think the soil depth makes a big difference. Thanks.

 

[fuzzi]

My beds are 14" tall. The debris I added was about half of the depth, 7". So the rotted compost, soil, and peat moss layer on top is also 7" deep. No issues. I suspect the roots make their way through the log section if the plant needs more room.

 

[gtaus]

My beds are 14" tall. The debris I added was about half of the depth, 7". So the rotted compost, soil, and peat moss layer on top is also 7" deep. No issues. I suspect the roots make their way through the log section if the plant needs more room.

Thanks. I have never considered my 6-8 inches of topsoil/compost on top of 8 inches of hügelkultur wood logs not to be enough to grow my food plants. But when I heard you should have 12-18 inches of topsoil, I was thinking that's more soil depth than a lot of raised beds even would hold. I think my raised beds at 16 inches high are taller than many raised beds, and even half of that height is probably deeper than some pots that people grow food in like on a deck or balcony.

I have pulled out plants from my raised beds and most of the root mass is in that first 6 inches, but some longer roots look like they go deeper into the log layer. In any case, I have been getting fantastic results from my hügelkultur raised beds with 6-8 inches of a good quality topsoil/compost mixture.

FWIW, I planted some pepper plants in my hügelkultur raised beds that grew to about 4 feet high and I was picking peppers from them for most of the summer. I had a few remaining plants to transplant at the same time, and I planted them in a section of my in-ground garden. The same starter plants in the in-ground garden only grew to about 1 foot high and had little to no produce.

As I have previously mentioned, I live on a lake and my in-ground garden soil is very sandy, not very good for growing food. I eventually gave up trying to improve my in-ground garden and moved to raised beds. There, I was able to use a good quality topsoil and chicken run compost mix that I believe makes a world of difference for me. The next evolution was to build hügelkultur raised beds and I have had even more success with them. Especially in dry summers with little rainfall. That hügelkultur wood acts as a giant water battery for the plants.

 

[Sally PB]

FWIW, I planted some pepper plants in my hügelkultur raised beds that grew to about 4 feet high and I was picking peppers from them for most of the summer. I had a few remaining plants to transplant at the same time, and I planted them in a section of my in-ground garden. The same starter plants in the in-ground garden only grew to about 1 foot high and had little to no produce.

Wow! FWIW... It's worth a lot!

 

[gtaus]

Wow! FWIW... It's worth a lot!

Yep, my native sandy lake soil is very poor for growing plants. I never had much success with my in-ground gardens. I tried, for many years, to add grass clippings and leaves to the soil, tilling them in to mix it in with the sand. I improved the soil over the years, but it was still never great. Probably not even at a good level for growing food.

Then I got into square foot gardening with raised beds, using Mel's mix for the raised beds, and that was a very big improvement. But the Mel's mix costs quite a bit to fill the raised beds. In the Square Foot Gardening book I had, it asked the question, do you want to spend years improving the quality of your poor soil, or do you want to invest in the Mel's mix this spring and harvest food this fall? Well, I invested in the Mel's mix for the raised beds and my productivity increased dramatically.

Somewhere along the line, I got a backyard flock of chickens and started to make chicken run compost. I found that I could mix (less expensive) high quality soil with chicken run compost and get even better results at a much lower price. Then I got into the hügelkultur system for raised beds and that took me to an even higher level or productivity. Again, the same pepper plant starts grew to about 1 foot high in my in-ground garden whereas the same pepper plant starts in my hügelkultur raised beds grew to about 4 feet high.

As I posted earlier in this thread, my 16-inch high 4X4 foot pallet wood raised beds cost me less than $2.00 to build. The chicken run compost I make is free. The hügelkultur wood is free. So, the only thing I buy is some high-quality topsoil. I estimate it costs me about $15-$20 per 4X4 bed in purchased topsoil but compare that to Mel's mix which 10 years ago cost me about $60 per raised bed.

If I had decent native topsoil, I would not even have to purchase any topsoil for my raised beds. But my native soil is not worth using. Given my age, it's well worth it to me to pay for some good topsoil and have great producing raised beds in year one. Yeah, it's well worth it to me.

 

[akroberts1085]

What is it with sandy soil? Some places, it seems like any organic stuff you add "washes" right on through.

When I think of my sandy soil garden, and how un-composty it seems, I then think of my friend's garden. Hers looks like beach sand compared to mine. It improved a LOT the year they got a big load of wood chips and put them on.

Watermelon loves sandy soil.

 

[gtaus]

When I think of my sandy soil garden, and how un-composty it seems, I then think of my friend's garden. Hers looks like beach sand compared to mine. It improved a LOT the year they got a big load of wood chips and put them on.

Since we are talking about sandy soil and wood chips, I just wanted to mention that in the Back To Eden videos, when Paul is talking about "wood chips" he is referring to wood chips that have lots of animal manures mixed in it - not just plain wood chips. One person who visited Paul's property stated that what Paul calls "wood chips" many of us would call unfinished compost. It's aged wood chips and full of animal manures and other organic material.

Also, a few years ago, I watched a YouTube video where a guy was tilling his wood chips into his soil. Now, that runs contrary to what most of think about using wood chips, which is to leave them on top of the soil and DON'T till them into the soil. But his rationale was that his soil was so bad that he needed to till in those wood chips to build organics in it.

Well, we all have different challenges to overcome in our gardens. For my part, after a number of years, I kind of gave up trying to improve my poor in-ground sandy soil and just started building raised beds. It was much cheaper, and significantly faster, to buy some top-quality topsoil and mix in compost in the raised beds and get immediate positive results.

Somewhere I read... do you want to make soil for a future garden or do you want to grow plants that will bear fruit this year? If you have poor soil, I think raised beds are the better option - especially when you get to a certain age in your life.

 

[Sally PB]

Somewhere I read... do you want to make soil for a future garden or do you want to grow plants that will bear fruit this year? If you have poor soil, I think raised beds are the better option - especially when you get to a certain age in your life

Yes, exactly!

 

[fuzzi]

This popped up on my YT feed:

As this guy was building his raised bed I thought of @gtaus and his build suggestions to prevent a side blowout, such as attaching the horizontal boards inside the frame.

See? I pay attention.

 

[gtaus]

As this guy was building his raised bed I thought of @gtaus and his build suggestions to prevent a side blowout, such as attaching the horizontal boards inside the frame.

Yep, those raised beds in that YouTube video look great when you first build them but given a few years outside with all that wet soil pushing out against those boards, you can easily get a side blowout. And if you make a raised bed 8 foot long, then I would highly suggest adding some support boards at the halfway 4-foot point to hold the sidewalls together. If not, you will probably see the sidewalls bowing out from the weight of the soil.

And yes, I made both those mistakes in my first raised bed build years ago. I have had a few side wall boards blow out and needed to be replaced, and my 8-foot-long raised beds without any center support to hold the sidewalls together have bowed out. The plants don't care, so I will not repair those raised beds. Eventually, I'll just replace them with better built raised beds if/when they rot out or fall apart.

For those who may just be checking out this thread at this point, my new 16-inch tall 4X4 pallet wood raised beds v2.0 design are holding up much better. That is because the 2X4 framing is on the outside of the raised bed, and since they are only 4X4 feet, they don't need any other supports to prevent bowing out. Also, it costs me less than $2.00 to make a pallet wood raised bed. The wood is free, just pay a little money for some screws and nails.