It's impressive, that's for sure. My first one is going to be a miniature version of that since I'm a hugelkultur amateur. But I'm sold.

Thanks for posting. One good picture is worth a thousand words. By the way, what will you be planting in it?

Nearly every explanation of hugelkultur Ive seen says to use "rotting" wood and in parathesis (you could use fresh green wood). But what if what you mainly have is fresh green wood? This is what I want to get rid of: mimosa, chinaberry, privet, various oak seedlings, sand pear, Asian wisteria, and English ivy.

My plan for the wisteria and ivy is to flame it with a Red Dragon propane torch. The rest is small trees and woody brush I plan to cut with my Alligator chain saw.

Ive read that a 50 lb sack of alfalfa pellets added to the bed will help with the nitrogen problems resulting from using the green wood.

Has anyone made hugelkultur beds with mainly green wood?

My most recently made hugelkultur swale beds were made almost entirely of freshly cut river birch and sweet gum. I don't yet know how well it'll work compared with already rotting wood, but I can give you an update this time next year.

Adding alfalfa pellets seems like a great idea, if a bit expensive. The sacks are around $12 here.

I grow inoculated legumes which makes a huge difference, in my opinion.

legumes. What kind? A mix?

Any legumes, really. Even vetch or clover.

But I generally grow cowpeas, specifically purple hull peas. They are great for eating and produce a lot of nitrogen.

For the cowpeas I order this packet from Peaceful Valley. For other legumes they have different inoculants.

Last fall I pulled up a plant and look what I found:



Those little balls on the roots are full of nitrogen.

Thanks for the photo of nitrogen balls! Ive been surfing, and found this list so far for nitrogen fixing cover crops. Hungarian grazing rye (this from a uk site), red clover, buckwheat, field beans, white mustard.
Also chicken manure and horsemanure. And I guess my rabbit poop would fit in here also.


And I know Peacful Valley is a great source for cover crops.

http://www.groworganic.com/cat...

From what I understand, freshly cut wood is fine, it's just going to take longer for you to get the "payoff". A combination, of both, fresh cut and rotting wood would be the ideal situation. Rotting wood would serve you in the near future, while fresh cut would pay back in the years to come. We put all of our fresh cut towards the bottom of the pile and kept the "rotting" wood towards the top. This way we will be able to use the decomposed wood much more sooner then the fresh cuts on the bottom... which will be used years down the line.

thanks, NJFoodforest. For me, I mostly will have fresh cut wood.
The older wood I have is Osage Orange, and it doesn't rot for 50 years!

Certainly do not use osage orange!!

What do you all think about the recommendation to not use cedar? We have white cedar here in the north, not red cedar, and it certainly seems to be rotting down just fine out in the woods around our house. We also buy locally produced shredded cedar mulch for the flower beds and that disappears pretty quickly. What about spruce?

I personally avoid all the fragrant woods due to the resins and whatever they have that cause them to have trouble rotting. As for spruce and white cedar, I can't speak to it at all. Hopefully someone else can help us on that.

Sandy, I have no idea if there's much difference, but people use red cedar down here for fence posts ..... maybe you can put it in an end of the bed and see if it degrades quicker than the red.

Tom- Where did the dirt come from?

I would think that cedar would be likely to keep beneficial insects away

Speaking of "where did the dirt come from"

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/f...

Scroll down to the entry by janetcw's photographs of her hugelkultur beds in Nova Scotia.
She didn't have much soil, so she robbed ant hills.

The white cedar doesn't have the aromatic "cedar chest" thing going on, although it is often used for fence posts... but the cedar mulch breaks down pretty much over the course of a year, and as far as the insects go it sure doesn't keep the mosquitoes away ! (or anything else as far as I can tell...) Guess I need to do more research on this!

My first hugelkultur veggie bed. It's about 25' long and was heavily sown on June 10th with about a dozen different varieties of pumpkins and melons. They're all doing great and some plants are beginning to set fruit already.



[Edited for spelling]

I had this bright idea of using the walls of a raised bed to enclose my hugelkulture bed. I bought a 3x6 foot bed when it was discounted and filled it up with sticks that fell out of my maple, plus other fallen sticks I found around the neighborhood.

Today I finished topping it off with 2- and 3-year-old leaf mould. Pic below.

I probably need a thick layer of compost on top, right? Maybe next spring?

That's going to be a nice rich bed!! I would definitely add some compost, and some regular garden soil if you have some, and mix that up right now. It'll all settle in over the winter and by spring you'll be ready to hit the ground running.

with Dave.

Plus, the heavier soil/compost mix will help to protect that wonderful leaf mold from the possibility of being lost on a dry, windy day.