Helen,

Hugelkultur works with any sort of wood. My personal preference is to haul in both the really decayed wood from rotten logs and limbs, as well as fairly new deadfall that has recently come down. That way, I feel like the plants can draw nourishment from the older wood early on while the newer wood breaks down. The first time I did it, I went into the woods with my stainless steel compost scoop (because it holds a lot more than a trowel) and scooped soft, rotted wood right out of rotting logs in the dead of winter. I carried it to the garden one 5-gallon bucket at a time and it took me weeks and weeks. I put it into beds I was building in the veggie garden, and the improvement in their performance the following season was astounding.

I used hugelkultur in Fort Worth to improve black gunbo clay in the 1980s long before I'd ever heard the term hugelkulture. I use it here to fix eroded gullies, which our property is full of. I put down big limbs and branches, small limbs, etc. and then throw compostable material on top of it. I keep adding compost for years and years. Once there's enough compost in the hugelkultur beds, native plants start growing on their own and I consider that spot "healed" from the erosion and start working on another spot.

In general, i don't build above-ground hugelkultur beds here for gardening purposes because when I tried, snakes moved in, as did field mice, voles and pack rats. The recurring droughts, though, have pushed me into trying them. The ones behind the barn have hay bales as a surrounding, or edging, and already a couple of our cats are hanging around there a lot. Maybe they'll control the rodents and then, without rodents the snakes will stay away. In the sandy soil garden, I intend to double dig the beds, put the hugelkulture materials in the ground, and put the soil, with compost added, back on top. With no exposed wood-pile like material above ground, hopefully the rodents and snakes will stay away. I am a slow digger, and now it is too wet to dig, so I won't be able to work on those beds for a few days.

In areas where I have put in ornamental beds around the house, we had such dense red clay that I had the guy who put in our tornado shelter dig out the area where I wanted to put ornamental beds down to a depth of about 15". I put wood in there first, then added compostable materials for 7 years. Each year, the wood broke down more and more, and of course all the compostable material did too. In the first couple of years, those beds held water like a pond. As the soil improved and the earthworms and other soil-dwellers carried the compost down into the clay beneath the beds, they stopped holding water like a pond. In the spring, I planted annuals in those beds, then mulched heavily. No one knew that under the mulch, I had a hugelkulture bed composting away beneath ground. After 7 years, I finally thought both the soil and the drainage were good enough that I could put in permanent plantings of shrubs. It took a long time to get those beds to the right place where they didn't hold water like ponds. I had to do it that way though to avoid having big hugelkulture beds above ground right by the porch. I used that method on the southeast, and south side of the house and the plants there are much happier than the plants on the northeast and north sides of the house that were planted straight into red clay amended with pine bark fines and compost. I'm considering redoing the northeast and north sides of the house next year. The soil there is still too clayey and either holds too much water for too long or dries out and refuses to absorb water.

You really cannot go wrong with hugelkultur. For a long time I shied away from using it more because of all the warnings from traditional garden experts that the wood underground would tie up nitrogen. I did not find that to be true either in Fort Worth in the 1980s and 1990s or since moving here in the late 1990s. Maybe it is just that I add enough compost, blood meal and organic fertilizers that the plants still get what they need if the wood is tying up nitrogen. When you use wood that is already broken down quite a bit, I don't think it ties up nitrogen as much as people say it will.

I don't always refer to what I do as hugelkultur because often I dig out an area and sink the hugelkultur-style bed into the ground instead of building it into a hill culture above ground. Mine really isn't a hugelkultur when put into the ground, but it functions in the same way--just below ground instead of above ground. I still have to build the raised bed above ground a few inches with soil and compost because I need to know the roots of the plants won't rot in the below-ground hugelkultur beds in dense clay. So far it works.

In these horrendous drought years when we have to do an insane amount of watering, I'll try anything that works to reduce the water bill. When I filled up my containers 2 or 3 years ago, they all got filled on the lower half with rotted wood, wood chips, etc.

The 4' deep round galvanized metal stock tank (it is over 20 years old and the bottom has completely rotted out, so drainage is perfect) has about 18" of woody material on the bottom and good potting soil mixed with compost, Black Kow cow manure and soil conditioner (a bagged mix of humus and bark fines) above that. I planted 4 tomato plants in that 4' diameter container (a sane person would have put 2in the same space) last February and those plants produced with relatively little irrigation until last October or November. That is remarkably good production for a long period of time in a very difficult weather year. In years when I didn't have the woody materials in the bottom of the galvanized tank, I had to water as often as twice as day. Last year I often watered only once every three or four days, even with the high temps were well over 100 degrees. Smaller containers still have to be watered every day or every other day, but with woody materials in the bottom, they don't have to be watered 2 or 3 times a day, so I feel like the woody materials are well worth using.....and I will keep on feeling that way until I have one too many snake encounters and run screaming into the house. : )

Dawn

Thanks Dawn. I have voles in a pile of top soil that is pretty much clay so I know I'll have voles but I have them anyway. My dog looks for them. You get me stirred up because if rotten wood is good, I have a gold mine. Who knew?

Hellen, that sure is a cute dog.

I plant my tomatoes at about 32" apart in the row and the rows about 50" apart. I do this because I like to drive the rider mower between the rows if I grow a cover crop. I dont prune anything. I may pinch off a few suckers or cut off a damaged limb. I maybe should prune a little to improve airflow.

Larry

That is a good idea to lay out your garden so a lawnmower fits between the rows. Once they get started tomatoes are big plants and can smother the little weeds. A nice place to walk between rows would be good. I am afraid my garden is more the jungle style. Thanks for answering I was hoping you could plant them close with your method, but I think you are right to give them room to grow.