Building some right now. I have an old pecan that is slowly coming down and it's been dead up there for quite some time. By the time it hits the ground its wood is broken down to the point where it soaks up water like a sponge. Under the ground protected from wind, it never lets go of that water combined with the clay. I never water vegetables on these spots with that type of wood except when building - even in drought years. In my clay soil the spongy wood breaks down very quickly, so I graduate the age of wood placing the newest at the bottom, etc.

The critters will thank you. Crickets as well as Salamanders, frogs and toads, as well as loads of insect, but I never have a problem with pests on the plants and no grubs. After I built my first one I became dismayed at the crickets that showed up. Of course they would. So much moisture and shetler, but then a salamander revealed itself. Actually, I think there were 2 salamanders. This was in 2010, when the drought was heavy. It's a perfect microclimate beneath the soil where the plant roots can pick and choose where they go to receive moisture and/or nutrition while providing so much more for everything else.

I found a pecan log lying around that had gigantic mushrooms all over it. I picked it up and clutched it like it was a holy relic and delicately placed it into the hugel bed I was building. lol Fungi is gold.

bon

Wow, Bon! That was a great post. Kinda like a poem. . . . going forward!

Toads also love the moist rich soil around hugelkultur beds! So do skinks. I have to be careful digging or I unearth a creature who'd rather not be dug up. I'm working on two new hugelkultur beds, and have been for some time, but I hope to get them finished and ready to use this summer, if not by spring. I'm filling them with logs I drag out of the woods, and with a warm winter and snakes out in the winter months (which is just NOT NORMAL, but has happened the last two winters), I haven't been able to go into the woods and fetch many logs this winter.

Bon, Fungi is gold. It drives Tim and Chris crazy when I retrieve and lug home old rotted wood they think is worthless. Last week they replaced several rotted wooded planks in one of our oldest raised beds and when I told them I wanted them to throw the old rotted plants in the hugelkultur bed I have under construction they sort of did that "whatever!" eye roll thing, but they carried those rotting planks to the hugelkultur bed that's under construction and tossed them on top. I've since buried them under a lot of spent plant matter from the garden, some compost and all the twigs and small limbs raked up from beneath the pecan tree. I just keep layering and layering more material on because I'm filling in the old lily pond, which was several feet deep, so it takes a lot to fill it in. One day, and I hope it is this summer, I'll have an awesome flower garden there for the butterflies and hummingbirds, though I think I may have to fence it off to keep the chickens from eating the butterflies.

Dawn

okoutdrsman It would be well worth it in my opinion. The compost is perfecto', as you know.

Dawn that would be perfect for perennials. By the time the hugel is gone, the perennials have already started to work. With enough rainfall, it will always be there. Lovely design.

Bruce, Go for it! When we moved here, we had a long row of rotting tree trunks and debris, lined up almost directly beneath the power lines and well along in the decomposition process. As it turned down, they were what was left over from trees cut down along utility easements after a huge ice storm in 1990 destroyed our electric co-ops power distribution system. (We have not had a storm that bad since then.) In either 1999 or 2000, I cut back all the greenbriar, Virginia creeper and dewberries growing up and through, around,and all over the mounds of mostly decomposed wood and spent days and days hauling the compost out of the woodland to use in our yard and garden. It was awesome compost and worth every backbreaking trip up the hill to our house pushing that wheelbarrow ahead of me. I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. Finding stuff like that is like finding pure gold.

Bon, The chickens will be sad when I finish it. Every time I dump a wheelbarrow load of anything on that "pile", which still sits about a foot below grade level no matter how hard I work to build it up (I guess it is decomposing and packing down faster than I am piling it up), the chickens come rushing in like maniacs and dig and scratch and peck away, gleaning any yummy morsel they can find. One of these days, though, it will be finished and then I'll put up a fence (preferably a cute one) to keep them out and it will be mine, mine, mine. I know I cannot plant flowers for the butterflies, bees and hummingbirds without a tall fence to protect the little wild things from our chickens and cats. I've been filling it in bit by bit for about 3 years now and it goes so, so slowly, but in all that time I've only had trouble with snakes in it 3 times, so I'm hopeful that once it is topped with soil and planted, maybe the snakes will stay away.

Dawn

3 years is magnificent. The longer, the better. Smart.

I'm so glad this thread was up! Super helpful to hear how everyone is filling theirs. I'm trying something similar, but it may not work as well as a standard hugelkultur because it isn't sunken so I'm worried it'll dry out too fast. I'm filling up my old metal raised beds. They are over 2' high, 4x8', and I had some really old rotten trees to get rid of so I'm going to give it a shot. Worst case I'll get some compost out of them eventually.

I have broken up old branches and leaves at the bottom of some of the larger containers now. . . and we did line the bottom of a couple of the raised beds with some of the really old firewood. Will be interesting to see what they do compared to the others.

I think it will work fine in your tall raised beds. What it will do for them ought to be remarkable because it should help them hold moisture better in the summer months, and with very tall raised beds like yours, that is important.

I've used it in raised beds and in containers, both here and in Texas back as far as the 1980s. It worked fine there. It works fine here. It is the best way I've found to garden organically in containers and in tall raised beds because the hugelkultur materials help create the microbiota that are necessary to break down organic fertlizers into components roots can take up. Many folks fail with organic growing in containers because they just use a soil-less mix that is sterile and lacks the microorganisms needed to allow plants to properly use organic fertilizers. Then they don't understand why the plants fail to thrive. Using hugelkultur materials in the pots creates the microorganisms needed, so you really cannot fail with using the hugelkultur in containers and raised beds.

Thanks you all! That makes me feel a lot more hopeful!

Makes me feel more hopeful, too. I hope I can find enough straw, leaves and other matter to pile up a sizeable thickness. If I can't, we'll just have to postpone for a while. And I'm going to cave and go buy some bags of good compost. Top off with some of our compost and amended dirt. There's a drainage ditch right next to the railroad ties. . . I'm thinking that's fine. We do get heavy rain at times, and when it hits, because or property is slightly sloped from the front to the back, west to east, and because the property is so rocky, that water forms regular little creeks going across.