Hügelkultur Raised Beds

[fuzzi]

My electric fence post digger just bounced off the red clay in NC about a foot down (requiring a tamping bar and sledge hammer)We don't have the same type of clay here(WV)The rocks are a pain

No rocks here in eastern NC, no Red Clay, either. I have a mixture of yellow and gray clay, and sand.

 

[McChooky]

No rocks here in eastern NC, no Red Clay, either. I have a mixture of yellow and gray clay, and sand.

I found out the hard way to use a sledge hammer and slate bar to bust the soil after I got about a foot down with the auger .I lived in the Piedmont at the time.WV clay is much easier to work with but the rock is a nightmare.You have to dig the rocks out or go around them

 

[McChooky]

No rocks here in eastern NC, no Red Clay, either. I have a mixture of yellow and gray clay, and sand.

I lived in the Piedmont area 20 years and built a couple fences for my dogs .Maybe it wasn't red? I wasn't the same color as ours in WV

 

[fuzzi]

I lived in the Piedmont area 20 years and built a couple fences for my dogs .Maybe it wasn't red? I wasn't the same color as ours in WV

We lived in Spartanburg SC, that's where we ran into Red Clay. No rocks there, either.

When I lived in Connecticut it was a trial trying to get rid of rocks in the garden. We swore the stones were reproducing every Spring!

 

[Molpet]

I live on a glacier moraine area. Lots of rocks working up over the years.

 

[DuckLady]

Hey all! How’s your gardens going? I got my radishes, peas and carrots planted out in the beds and started tomatoes, sunflowers, cukes and sweet pea flowers indoors. It’s so nice to see the iris, peonies, and other perennials poking their leaves up.

 

[Land of Lincoln]

I’m wanting to fill the beds with compost and composted chicken manure that’s sat for well over a year. Im not planning on buying any soil if I don’t have to. Would rather try to use what I have on hand and what I can make on my own.

Do you think veggies would grow in a mix without actual “soil” per se? I guess I could try and see. Just wondering if any of you have experience growing in a soilless mix and what the results were.

 

[TOMTE]

Sorry this is a bit off topic... Tangentially related? It's about gardening and I'm just curious

Does anyone do hydroponics? My dad bought a couple small Spyder hydroponics/lights kits a couple years ago but didn't have much luck with them.

My mom and step-dad are trying hügelkultur this year! I'm excited to go over in the summer and see how everything is doing. Mom has some tomato plants started in little pots but she started them too early so they might just die before the weather gets warm enough to transplant them outside. We have lots of dead wood and leaves here that she can take for the beds. Got a log pile that's hardly been touched in over a decade so there's lots of nice, pulpy stuff.

 

[gtaus]

New YouTube Video Cautions on Using Hügelkultur?

I am a big fan of using the hügelkultur method in raised beds. I think it's absolutely the best method to fill my raised beds. It works much better for me than non-hügelkultur raised beds. All my raised beds in the last 3 years use the hügelkultur method.

Is it possible to do it wrong? Certainly. I mean, you would not put an inch of topsoil on top of logs and expect much to grow, would you? Anyways, I like to watch different viewpoints on methods I use to see what that person has to say. After watching this video, I wonder if his title is not just clickbait, because mostly he talks about the many advantages of hügelkultur raised beds but then goes into different ways to make sure it does not work. Well, don't do those things, I guess.

FWIW, I will restate how I successfully use the hügelkultur method in my raised beds. My 4X4 foot pallet wood raised beds are 16 inches tall. I put logs in the bottom 6-8 inches, cover that with finer stuff like wood chips or mulch, then a layer of organic material, topped off with 6-8 inches of a topsoil/chicken run compost mixed 1:1.

That initial 6-8 inches of topsoil/compost is deep enough for my tomato and pepper plants. If you are growing root vegetables, you would, of course, need more soil depth. If that is your goal, you could either dig a trench below ground level to put in your logs, and put more topsoil in the raised bed, or you could add another frame on top of the raised bed and fill it up with an additional 6 inches of topsoil where you wanted to grow root vegetables.

Every year my topsoil level in the raised bed gardens drop down 1-2 inches. That is the process of the organic layer and some wood starting to breakdown. That's a good thing. I top off my hügelkultur raised beds with fresh topsoil/chicken run compost. Year after year, that upper topsoil/compost layer gets deeper. Adding fresh compost every year gives the bed a significant boost of nutrition for the plants. It works great for me.

Here is the newly posted YouTube video on some things you might want to think about if you plan on using the hügelkultur raised bed method...

 

[gtaus]

a pallet greenhouse...

Fantastic! Very nice!