Hügelkultur Raised Beds

[gtaus]

After you all have put whatever filler material at the bottom of your raised beds, what do you top it off with? I have 4-4x8 raised beds that I topped with a quality organic soil I purchased last fall.

I typically start the base of my 16-inch high hügelkultur beds with logs. That log layer takes about 8 inches. If I have something like wood chips, I like to add them to the base layer of larger logs to fill voids. If you don't attempt to fill those voids, your soil level in the raised bed will fill the gaps and you will have a larger than expected drop in your soil level for the first couple of years.

If you don't have wood chips to fill the voids, use anything you can get like leaves, grass clippings, etc...

After the log layer in the base, I put a thin layer of organics on top of the logs. That usually leaves me with about 6-8 inches remaining to fill.

For that remaining top 6-8 inches, I use a high-quality topsoil and chicken run compost mixed 1:1. My plants grow well in that top 6-8 inches, but as the hügelkultur bed matures and the soil level drops, I add about 2 inches per year of new compost to fill the raised bed. Over time, that top 6-8 inches will get deeper.

I don't grow root vegetables, so 6-8 inches is deep enough for my tomato and pepper plants. Their roots will actually go down deep into the logs below and suck up water from storage. If I wanted to grow root vegetables and needed, say 12 inches of topsoil, I would just make a smaller frame out of wood 1X6's, place it on top of my raised bed, and fill that frame with additional topsoil/compost mix.

Im wanting to make several more beds of various sizes because I really like not having to bend over as far to tend to the beds. A truckload of the organic soil I got is really good quality but with the amount of beds I’d like to make, the sheer volume of soil would get very expensive.

Exactly. I tell everyone that my 4X4 foot 16 inch high pallet wood raised beds cost me about $2.00 to build. The only real expense I have is in buying my topsoil. I talked to the head guy at our local nursery, and he suggested that I mix the topsoil with my chicken run compost 1:1. That not only saves me half the soil cost per bed, but evidently the topsoil and compost provide different nutrients and material for the plants that neither one alone provides.

If you limit your top growing layer of topsoil/compost to 6-8 inches like I do, you can grow most plants that are not deep root vegetables and save yourself lots of money by not filling up the bed with more expensive soil mix than the plant needs. Again, if you want to grow deep root vegetables, then add a small frame on top of the bed to increase the soil depth for those plants.

Or, maybe just make one or two beds specifically for deep root plants. Not all your beds have to be built the same.

With 12 chickens and hot composting, there’s a fair amount of material on hand at the moment but once the additional beds are made, I’m sure that will deplete very quickly. What do you all use to fill beds?

I converted my entire chicken run into a chicken run composting system. Since then, I have no shortage of Black Gold compost ready to harvest whenever I need it. Last year, I built four new raised beds and topped off eight existing raised beds with my chicken run compost - using about only 10% of my available compost in the run! So, I plan on adding some more new raised beds this year.

FYI, I pay about $50.00 for a load of high-quality topsoil at our nursery. That fills my 4X8 foot utility trailer, about 12 inches high. When mixed with my chicken run compost in that 1:1 ratio, I was able to fill 4 new hügelkultur beds last year and top off my other existing beds. I estimated that it cost me about $10 per new raised bed for the topsoil used, and much less for topping off the existing beds. I can afford that. The magic is using all that wood as organic filler, creating those water batteries for the raised beds, and using my free Black Gold chicken run compost to bulk up my final topsoil mix.

 

[gtaus]

Getting Ready For New Huglekulture Bed Builds

I had to pull down a dead pine tree (Widow Maker) this week. It was about 50 feet tall and hung up in the branches of the surrounding trees. This picture shows the trunk that was broken off at about 10 feet above the ground. I failed to take a picture of the tree hung up in that mess, but you can see how tall those other trees are...

Here is a partial picture of the actual tree that I pulled down, you can see how dead it was with no green on it anywhere...

Yesterday, I cut that tree up into logs and today I filled two garden wagons with the wood. That should be enough to make at least 2, maybe 3 new 4X4 hügelkultur raised beds....

I really like the hügelkultur method of filling raised beds. Not only do I get better plants because of the water retention of the logs, but I also get to clean up my yard from all that woody debris at the same time. I will be raking up all my leaves and fallen small branches over the winter and add them to them to my hügelkultur raised beds as well. That's much more satisfying to me than burning that stuff in a fire pit. I now consider all that debris as a valuable resource.

 

[McChooky]

Getting Ready For New Huglekulture Bed Builds

I had to pull down a dead pine tree (Widow Maker) this week. It was about 50 feet tall and hung up in the branches of the surrounding trees. This picture shows the trunk that was broken off at about 10 feet above the ground. I failed to take a picture of the tree hung up in that mess, but you can see how tall those other trees are...

View attachment 4072487

Here is a partial picture of the actual tree that I pulled down, you can see how dead it was with no green on it anywhere...

View attachment 4072494

Yesterday, I cut that tree up into logs and today I filled two garden wagons with the wood. That should be enough to make at least 2, maybe 3 new 4X4 hügelkultur raised beds....

View attachment 4072499

I really like the hügelkultur method of filling raised beds. Not only do I get better plants because of the water retention of the logs, but I also get to clean up my yard from all that woody debris at the same time. I will be raking up all my leaves and fallen small branches over the winter and add them to them to my hügelkultur raised beds as well. That's much more satisfying to me than burning that stuff in a fire pit. I now consider all that debris as a valuable resource.

I'm glad you were able to safely remove it and use the wood in your hügelkultur beds. (They don't call them widow makers for no reason!) My grandfather was a logger and built the house we grew up. Best garden spot was where they dumped all their sawdust.

 

[gtaus]

My grandfather was a logger and built the house we grew up.

Lots of respect to those guys risking their lives everyday felling trees. Although I have lots of DIY experience taking down trees, cutting the wood up, and maybe splitting it into firewood, it's not like I am out there risking life and limb every day. Most of my office jobs had a risk of a papercut...

Best garden spot was where they dumped all their sawdust.

I have watched a lot of Paul Gautschi YouTube videos on his Back to Eden method of composting wood chips and making soil. I imagine that sawdust made some great soil when mixed with other organics and left to compost. What many people miss in Paul's method is that the wood chips he uses are actually composted with animal manures before he puts the "wood chips" out in his garden. Plants don't grow well in plain wood chips. I think many of us would his "wood chip" use as compost based on wood chips.

I think sawdust would make great filler for the voids left between the larger logs in the bottom of a hügelkultur raised bed. You could really pack that stuff in those voids and make the bed even better with less soil level loss in the raised bed in those first years.

I am assuming that your sawdust garden had been sitting for a number of years and composting in place. I don't think plants would grow well in fresh sawdust.

 

[Land of Lincoln]

That’s a heckuva widowmaker indeed. The pallets it’s laying on tells me there could be some more beds in store for your garden as well.

Paul Gautschi & the back to Eden method is what I’ve been using for a few years now. I watched that documentary several years ago and decided to try it. I’ve had good and bad luck with it, the bad is mainly due to me not keeping enough material covering the ground. It does work because I’ve seen it first hand. My problem has been keeping enough material covering the ground to keep the weeds at bay. Human error on my part. The woodchips decay a lot faster than I realized and with the size of the garden, I just couldn’t keep up.

I have a 50’x175’ fenced in garden and it takes A LOT of material to cover that broad of space. To date I’ve used at least 10-15 truckloads of woodchips and have another 5 loads on the ground waiting for me to move into the garden. The best way for me to learn is to try something and fail, then I can react and see what works and what doesn’t.

I like the fungal life that the woodchips bring to the garden and the mycorrhizae hyphae life that takes place. It’s very interesting to me. It’s a whole other world that I’m trying to learn about and seems to be symbiotic for a good soil life.

There’s so much information out there that it’s hard to prescribe to one method. We all want the best gardens we can have, at least I think we do. Sharing information is how we all grow (pun intended) to not only be better gardeners but better stewards of our land.

This thread has moved me to not only try raised beds but the hugelkultur method as well. This will be my first year with both so I am excited to see the results.

Thank you to all of you who post your experiences here. Those experiences are what get me to try new things I may never have tried.

 

[gtaus]

That’s a heckuva widowmaker indeed. The pallets it’s laying on tells me there could be some more beds in store for your garden as well.

I would like to build another four new raised beds this year. I got the system down pretty good at making the raised beds out of the pallet wood. Unfortunately, I have to build protective cages for each bed as well because last year the deer ate most of my food.

My bigger goal is to someday build a pallet wood greenhouse. I have enough pallets to make that happen. But I have lots of other projects that have more priority right now.

To date I’ve used at least 10-15 truckloads of woodchips and have another 5 loads on the ground waiting for me to move into the garden.

That's a lot of wood chips. Do you compost the wood chips with manures and/or other organics before you put them out in the garden? I have heard some people think they can plant directly into fresh wood chips and then complain about nothing growing. From what I understand, Paul G. uses wood chips composted with animal manures and other organics. Not just plain wood chips. That is a big difference.

This thread has moved me to not only try raised beds but the hugelkultur method as well. This will be my first year with both so I am excited to see the results.

Yeah, lots of good info on this thread for setting up a hügelkultur raised bed. All my raised beds are using the hügelkultur method because it saves me money on fill, the logs act as giant water batteries, and using all that wood helps me clean up the yard.

I hope you have success with your new beds. Please post your results and/or your thoughts on the hügelkultur raised bed method after you give it a try. Like you said, we learn from each other.

 

[Land of Lincoln]

I could see once you get to making some beds out of pallets or other discarded materials, it could become contagious or addictive.
Get into a routine like gtaus and you’d probably become as efficient too.

 

[gtaus]

I could see once you get to making some beds out of pallets or other discarded materials, it could become contagious or addictive.

Perhaps you are right. I blame most of it on having a backyard flock of chickens, which are making tons of Black Gold chicken run compost for my gardens. So much, in fact, that I have doubled and doubled again my number of raised beds over the past 4+ years.

Saving pallets from the landfill is certainly a positive aspect of my builds. A lot of those pallets would have ended up in our county landfill, buried in a pit. Better that I take them and use them for something good.

When I started making my pallet wood raised beds, lumber was sky high during COVID and it would have cost me about $200.00 per bed. Prices have come down a lot now, but still maybe around $100.00 per 4X4 bed? I should probably price it out again.

In any case, it only costs me about $2.00 in screws and nails for a 4X4 foot pallet wood raised bed 16-inches high. Although I save my old pallet nails, I do use new nails and screws in my build because I have a nail gun, and I like using screws for the frame. It is a lot faster for me to use the nail gun and an impact driver. I have to buy topsoil, but mixed with my chicken run compost, I estimate somewhere around $10.00 more for soil for each bed. That's not too bad.

Get into a routine like gtaus and you’d probably become as efficient too.

That's so true. I have cut my time down to less than half of my first builds. You learn how to do things better just by doing it. But it's a hobby for me so I find that time relaxing and I don't have to push myself to get anything done as fast as possible.

Another big advantage to using the hügelkultur method is that I can use the off cut and unwanted pallet wood pieces inside the raised bed as additional filler wood in the base. Here is an example of me cleaning up the garage and putting to good use all those bits and pieces leftover from my projects...

Mostly I use larger logs in the base of raised beds and this smaller stuff is used as filler in the smaller pallet wood planters I build for Dear Wife's flowers. But I had finished filling the flower planters, so all this small stuff got used in a new raised garden bed. I figure wood is wood, so nothing goes to waste.

 

[akroberts1085]

That's the only potato sprouts coming up after I put 4 new bags of soil in the bed a while back. The gray pot is my oops my bad, I got busy doing something else and forgot I had put the seeds packets in there.

 

[McChooky]

Lots of respect to those guys risking their lives everyday felling trees. Although I have lots of DIY experience taking down trees, cutting the wood up, and maybe splitting it into firewood, it's not like I am out there risking life and limb every day. Most of my office jobs had a risk of a papercut...



I have watched a lot of Paul Gautschi YouTube videos on his Back to Eden method of composting wood chips and making soil. I imagine that sawdust made some great soil when mixed with other organics and left to compost. What many people miss in Paul's method is that the wood chips he uses are actually composted with animal manures before he puts the "wood chips" out in his garden. Plants don't grow well in plain wood chips. I think many of us would his "wood chip" use as compost based on wood chips.

I think sawdust would make great filler for the voids left between the larger logs in the bottom of a hügelkultur raised bed. You could really pack that stuff in those voids and make the bed even better with less soil level loss in the raised bed in those first years.

I am assuming that your sawdust garden had been sitting for a number of years and composting in place. I don't think plants would grow well in fresh sawdust.

They raised chickens and kept a team of logging horses down at the saw mill (right below the house)They only fenced what they needed for the garden and horses (16 acres) Mostly to keep the neighbors cows out.You could almost stand under the horses belly.