From your situation I think that using the logs for hugelkultur would be PERFECT for you!

Hugelkultur should make the logs "hostile" to slugs because you will be burying the logs. Slugs travel along the ground, not under it, so burying the logs will make them quite inhospitable. It might take a little while for all the slugs to die off, but getting the logs out of their reach will help immensely.

Several of the regulars on the soils forum are familiar with or have tried hugelkultur. I do it, too, but I'm down here in the middle U.S.

I'll see if I can direct them over here to your hugelkultur question. :)

g'day,

hugelkultur - hill culture is another adaptation for raised bed sheet mulch gardening, it is a process we have sued for many years before we heard of hugelkultur, see our bale garden presentation.

it fits very well in sustainable permaculture type gardening as it allows for the disposal of larger plant material without the need to dispose of it in other ways or chip/shred it.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens straw bale garden

Thank you Ralleia for your prompt and very encouraging reply. I somehow thought that slugs were able to negotiate earth: just hide out over winter and then emerge when it warmed up. We were fortunate last summer because we had a very dry summer which following a winter with very low snowfall, so we had hardly any slugs until late in the summer when we started to have rains and then they come out by the hundreds. It was terrible having to deal with them each night. Now I know I can undertake this project, I think I will have to put some of my gardening on hold this year, so I can get these logs underground and have some proper beds for next year's growing season. I'll have a look at the soils forum.

Len, I enjoyed your straw bale garden video. Very interesting reading. I am in a suburban sub division, so I don't have enough room to try it. A few years ago I did something similar with an area next to a cedar hedge. Laid down cardboard, saved kitchen scraps, chipped leaves and newspaper and it is now planted with a variety of shade loving ornamentals. It was another big job. Thank you both.

I think hugelkultur would work very well for your situation. I tried it for the first time last year and it was very successful. I'm in Nova Scotia and we had an extremely wet spring and summer. I was doing morning and evening slug patrols usually collecting several hundred slugs at a time. The one place that didn't seem to have a slug problem was the hugelkultur bed. It was definitely not in a dry area. Mind you, it wasn't planted until early June and I planted squash there, which may be less attractive to slugs than the beans and cole crops which they attack mercilessly. I'm planning to plant either broccoli or beans in that bed this summer, so I guess I'll find out how those crops fare with respect to slug damage. I was so pleased with the hugelkultur that I created 3 more beds in the fall and have been collecting wood to make a couple more once the snow melts. If you'd like to see a description and some photos of my last summer's hulgelkultur effort they are in a follow-up to a hugelkultur post on the organic gardening forum.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hugelkultur

Thanks janetcw.

Just finished putting in 2 small hugelkultur beds, motivated by your pictures.

Have heavy clay soil, that I don't want to double dig for years, hopefully this will be a one time effort and just no-till for future years.

hey emgardener, almost a year now. Any updates?

Just little update. Thanks to Janet and others on this forum, I made two hugelkultur beds last spring. They were against my back fence and we had a low snowfall, and then the summer turned out to be a drought, so the large amounts of water were not present last spring. We have now had more snow to date than the entire month last year, so I will see how these beds deal with the excess moisture. Last summer I was able to grow runner beans, some Chinese long beans, cauliflower, butternut squash, and a few ornamentals (Four o'clocks, great blue lobelia). They did OK, but as I said, there was a drought and I did not water them, so production was not great. I will not be able to do very much gardening this summer due to health reasons, but I am sure I can handle some pole beans and perhaps some melons. Looking forward to see how others fared. I will keep you updated.