My grandpa was born in Germany around the turn of the last century. Placement! He had them run along the hill to capture the water to make a series of terraces. He dug the ditch like you did, then he built a fire in the ditch. That followed by punky wood that was no longer good for burning (like 2 yr old firewood), leafy stuff/field cuttings/compost, then we kids poured on buckets of water (old school), ... repeat with medium wood, repeat with tiny wood, finish with top soil removed from ditch. His beds were very high! It has been years, but I remember the first year being as tall as me as a kid. First year was a cover crop. His rows were maybe 20' long. They were not so tall when I grew up, but they were still terraces after 30+ years.
I have been doing this method for decades. Long before I knew it was a thing. It works absolutely amazingly. The soil gets better and better every year and the biological activity and microorganism density is insane.
I used this concept on a much smaller scale last fall to fill up Rubbermaid storage containers that my neighbor gave me. We were trimming back an Althea (Rose of Sharon) bush and I took advantage of all those sticks and trimmings. Imagine my surprise this spring when dozens of Althea babies began sprouting in my containers among the carrots and onions!
Ohhh... I have come to hate Rose of Sharon with the fire of 1000 suns. My neighbors on both sides have it and it's old enough to be the original, non-sterile varieties. Every spring I'm pulling out THOUSANDS of seedlings. If a seedling hides from me then I'm pulling out a young tree.
This was so cool! Especially the digging into the dirt 6 mo. later, to see what stuffs looked like underneath. I appreciated the step by step process for sure, but the explanations for why steps were taken, even the simple stuff, was really useful. Thanks you!
I had no idea it would be so special to see wheat growing in an actual garden. These days, wheat is usually something you see on tv at large agro-corp facilities. It was beautiful seeing a small field of it growing like it might have in past times
Thanks. I made a hugelkulture in the fall 2019 it was 3' under ground and 4' above. It never reduced water use, and was honestly quite disappointing. This year I removed the above ground layer because it was invaded by a gopher. I will place shallow raised beds with hardware cloth on the bottom. To make use of the wood in the ground, but give the veggies a buffer from the gophers. Maybe your smaller hugelkulture is a better option in the hot dry weather. Thanks, and good luck.
We've been making a "lazy" hüglekultur bed for a couple of years now because our neighbor's linden tree is slowly dying and drops branches into our yard with every storm. So we've just piled them into a pyramid and tossed clippings, etc. on top of them. It looks like it's aged enough that it's about ready for something to go in it. Might try a squash this year.
Following up on folks that should join your team... i HIGHLY recommended reaching out to more than farmers. Im absolutely enamored with their way of living and how they appraoch homesteading.
Suggest a community gardener as well. I live in a high rise in the DC metro and have been a community gardener for over 10 years. 30 by 30 in 7b. I’m not photogenic so am not volunteering!
$0 DIY Raised Bed Method Hügelkultur. Great title. I sub here but others that don't may miss this valuable video. Looking forward to more great videos Jacques.
I used this method in my raised beds before i even knew it was a thing, it just made sense to me. I didnt quite use large logs but i filled half my raised beds with old leaves and lilac bush trimmings. Its been 2 years and everything is dirt now
Jacque, this was an awesome video about Hugelkutur gardening. The best of the many videos I've seen on Hugelkutur gardening over ten years on UTube.. Congratulations and thank you. You're a great teacher. Liz
I loved my Hugel beds. I had them for about 12 years until they were wiped out during the flood of 2019. They were a great way to a variety of crops with flowers helping with pollination. If you can find the space, materials and time to build these, by all means do. Many HOAs and townships are not allowing these in yards because of a "Lack of uniformity" and an eyesore. Please check to see if you can build these in your yard.
I just updated two of my three rotted wood raised beds to metal and was looking for something to do with the the rotted 2x6s and 4x4s. I was thinking of doing a mushroom bed with stropharia/winecaps, I may give this a go and see how that works. I figure worst case I get good soil to use elsewhere.
I started a Hügelbeet just about a month before you posted this video, and it's basically exactly what you did - except I didn't have the idea of using wheat to cover the hill. Now, after two months occasional watering during dry spells in-between heavy rains, it's starting to show that where there's no plant to hold the soil in place, the mound is starting to fall out of shape.
I threw in a 5-7 year old log into a very large stainless steel planter. I threw soil conditioner on top of the log and a toooon of potting soil on top. I planted my tomatoes and peppers in here. I’m hoping for the best!!!
Wow... talk about a great experiment. Sure, I've heard about it for years, but seeing it really brings is home. That really does act as a moisture sink. I'm sold
I like to add kitchen scraps and lawn trimmings with the wood at the bottom. I feel it attracts insects and bacteria quicker - also works to heat up the bed a bit, i planted 3 months after preparing my bed and couple inches down it was warm to the touch in the middle of the bed and worked great for some crops.
My 2nd year LARGE hugelkultur bed is blowing my first season no-till beds out of the water. It's shocking. The garlic and sweet onions I have going on it look like they want to go to the state fair. But it did take a full year for it to really get going on the fertility. But I do have a tall Birdie's bed I was trying to figure out how to fill.....I'm totally going to fill the bottom half with wood, which I have!
Apply the principle and use it in your "pots". Even by amending my soil, I'm putting small dried twigs at the bottom of the pot to help give it air, space, and something for the roots to latch onto when/if they get to the bottom.
Oh my gosh thank you so much for taking the time to do a video like this. I’m sure it has been hard not to peek into that dirt. After seeing this. I feel like I would just love to do this to my entire yard super impressive
You and Kevin are awesome! Total rookie here, so, dumb question alert! 1, would it make sense to pre-soak the old spongy wood before hand?? And #2, would it make sense to put worms in the last layer prior to the green leafy plant trimmings, just above the wood and dirt?? Thanks so much!
Fantastic experiment and wonderfully clear explanations. Yes to 1-year, 2-year updates and reports on how your next ones do too! Would be interesting to see if hugelkultur beds in an area of the garden with poorer drainage (wetter) would help absorb that extra water into the big chunks of wood and modulate the water content better.
hey Jacques en Erik, i was watching an old video of you building a garden voor kehlani and wonderd why you always buy bags of soil. Here in the Netherlands if you want to buy it in bulk you can get a bigbag full with the same soil for a cheaper price and without the waste.
In the US availability depends on where you are. In a lot of areas you can get a landscaping business to bring a truckload of soil/compost/mulch/whatever, the issue is that you have to have somewhere for them to dump it on your property. The first year I lived in my house I ordered 6 cubic yards (about 4.5 cubic meters) of soil and it took up most of my small front yard. Now that's all flowers so I don't have anywhere for them to dump a load. The biggest bags I've ever seen around where I live (Pennsylvania) are 3 cubic feet (not even a tenth of a cubic meter). I try to buy as little as possible.
Made mine with a combination of hot compost and 15 percent biochar last years rabbit manure coffee grounds egg shells leaves and straw for mulch. I wish I would have cut branches down shorter. But I have a 7 foot cherry tomato
And Jacques, hit the literature for wheat and mycorrhizal fungi! Your wheat may be getting help from friends related to the wood, not just the water in the wood. :)
My raised beds have to be very tall because they are on a slope. I built them to be 32" tall to deal with the steep slope we had. So the bottom of the beds are all logs. And I put sticks and wood chips to fill in the gaps. Then I have 16" of raised bed potting mix. I'm going to add the native clay back with the logs for my next beds since settling is pretty significant each year. I should dig down to see what the logs look like now that it's been 3 years.
Our community garden might be relocating, and I am planning strategies of what to prioritize to salvage from my current plot, which is mostly kitchen herbs and vegetables. How best to start over in the new location when I only have access to it during the growing season in 5b. Generally, we only have nearby access to water from May through October, and aren’t supposed to access the garden outside of that period.
I made a hugelkultur in my back yard a few years ago. Made a video digging in at the two year mark. I was expecting moist soil but it was still poorer quality, very dry soil, worse than all the yummy soil snacks I added at the build. My hypothesis is that because we were in a drought for years 1-2 (and 3) of the hugel, there was not enough moisture for the bed to retain in the first place. I did hand water, I had to, but nothing is as effective as a soaking rain, in my experience. This summer would be year 4 of the hugel, I should dig again and see if the bed quality has improved at all. I will say that even though it hasn't met my expectations, it does grow food, I still plant on it, so it has value. Great video, very helpful, I hope more people try a hugel. Still glad I tried it. If I had room, I would do another, just to get rid of the yard waste.
I've just built a raised bed out of a collapsed metal shed and reused wood and an currently filling many many wheelbarrows full of logs, branches, twigs, leaves, rabbit droppings etc hoping it works well as I'm in almeria area Spain as we've had no substantial rain for over a year 😔 P.s.if u ever fancy a garden makeover episode and a holiday to Spain...... I can definitely help with that 😁🙏🙏😅
Appreciate you digging up your hugelkultur bed so we can witness what's happening. Its essentially wrecked the delicate ecosystem that's developing in there over the season. Surprised there arent' a ton of worms though.
I have heard that hugelkultur doesn't work as well in the actual tropics since things break down so much faster than in other climates. So it ends up being less work to just add compost for fertilization (I don't live in the tropics though, so hugelkultur works great for me!)
hi jacques 🤗 thanks for sharing more great info. excellent explanations and demo. ill definitely head over to your channel for the follow-up video. tfs
We had a huge jungle of apple, fig, and ceanothus branches to get rid of and used this method in our raised beds last year. Its amazing how fast that all breaks down. And it was so easy to turn the beds this year. I think the pet rats' beddingade the veg extra spicy😂
I'm doing a simplified/partial version of this in my Birdies raised bed. I have a bunch of brush that's been sitting in a pile in my backyard so I figure I can use some of that.
This is all great information! We have done something similar, but we can’t keep the grass and weeds from growing on top of it. What is your solution from that happening to your mound?
So cool 🙌 I need to do this. We have a decently large wooded property, so there are always decaying trees around if we go looking. I’m guessing that sod we lift to expand flower beds would also be good to add? I used some in the bottom of some huge pots to cut down on container soil.
This was very interesting and informative. We had a bunch of tree limbs come down a few months ago after a heavy wind storm, we have them in our burn pile. We have 2+ acres in Houston. Can the wood ash be used in this type of Hugelkultur? Thank you, I always learn a lot from Jacques!!
I love your videos! They are very informative! I have one question. I did a hugulkultur bed but now is full of red ants, big ants. 😢what should I do? I put some diometacious earth, but when i spray water or work on the bed they surface by the 100's.😢😢 I live in central Florida and the heat is craa!zy, you water and water just runs thru!😢😢 any advice will really be appreciated. ❤
Can you use all wood chips instead of logs and branches? I have an abundance of extra chipped and it would be convenient to use as the base layer of my mound
I have a bunch of eucalyptus logs that I could use for this, but would that be suitable? Doesn't eucalyptus have allopathic chemicals in it? You know how prevalent Eucalyptus is here in San Diego!
Hi, due to allelopathy, are there certain species of wood to avoid? Was told Apple, Alder, Cottonwood, Birch and willow are the best and to absolutely avoid anything from the genus Juglans, such as Walnut. Also heard Pine and Fir can hinder germination? I live in Oregon where Fir and Pine is ubiquitous.
Avoid anything that is very resistant to rot and anything that will sprout from a twig you half stick the tiniest twig into the ground (e.g., willow). Pines and firs seem to depend on soil type, etc. of the location. For some people pine and fir work great, for others, not so much.
I will say I have several beds that I've done this method which grow and produce amazing results the only complaint I have I live in a region where it's extremely hot during the daytime in the later part of the summer and it's even been a scorcher out to wear a lot of my plants are suffering from the heat already, these beds if they're not let Set after put together and watered repeatedly and let sit in the elements for a while they put off a lot of heat and the have a tendency in hotter climates to wither the plants were the plants have spots on the leaves because they're magnesium deficient. So just take a quarter of a cup of Epsom salt and throw it in your bed and work it in really good and make sure you add bone meal. Other than that just be careful if you're in the hot climate but the colder climates this is perfect because you can always put screen over it put plastic over it and grow into the later fall early winter season because the composting from the beds in the worms moving through your boxes create heat and we'll keep the heat trapped inside the plastic.
I’m a very beginning gardener so forgive this question but I’m curious if I can use grass clippings as part of the materials used for building the mound?
thanks, Jacques. I have lots of invasive Holly that I'd like to cut down and repurpose, but don't want to essentially just "plant" them in a hugel mound. Is there any danger of Holly logs sprouting under the mound? Thanks.
I'm hoping to build a couple of raised beds this autumn/winter, and want to put wood in the bottom. But my question is: how big a concern are termites? I can't imagine that being buried under a foot or two of dirt would kill them. I don't have any wood of my own, so I was thinking I could probably check for free stuff...But I also don't want to bring pests in! For reference, im in central Texas. I just attended a compost workshop last weekend, and one of the other participants said when he stopped for free mulch, a city employee even told him there was a good chance it had termites. 😬
There are termites in the soil, so you are correct that being buried isn't going to kill them. That said, the general advice is, yes, there's a possibility that your hugelkultur bed will become a termite buffet. HOWEVER, they are part of the process of breaking down the wood, so they're beneficial that way. Just build your bed as far away from your house as possible and monitor closely for anything moving towards your house.
The thing that gives me pause from trying this, is concern the fungus would get out of control. I've had problems with that before and am always seeking to have well-draining soils. I'm not completely closed minded to this technique but am wondering if anyone has any experiences using this and was fungus a concern for it?
Random question, but, I’m in the UK and it’s been a cool damp winter/spring. This year’s growbag peppers are really lagging while waiting for the soil to warm up. Even under cover with mulch they’re not enjoying the ~9-10c(48-50f) night lows So you know grass clippings, compost etc will get hot as they break down? If someone were to stick a big bunch of grass clippings in the middle of their container plant soil(near roots), would that little pocket of decomposition noticeably increase soil temps? Or would it be smothered by the surrounding soil and have no impact? Sorry I hit the dab pen and keep coming up with questions idk the answers to 🥴
It worked in my raised beds. I did it unintentionally but I ended up making sort of a warm compost bin under my raised bed soil by putting a layer of logs, sticks, grass clippings, leaves, and finally raised bed soil. But my beds are 32” tall and the top 16” was raised bed mix. When I dug into plant my tomatoes and peppers, it was noticeably warm. Thankfully not hot but definitely warm. But my beds are 4’x4’. I don’t know if a container is big enough to get it warm. You can always try it with a pepper plant you have extra of to see if it works. The layer of grass clippings I had wasn’t super thick, only a couple inches.
The tree of liberty is........well, my lawyer says I shouldn't finish that statement. Also the fact that EG liked this post says amazing things about Epic.
