Hügelkultur Raised Beds

[gtaus]

Interesting idea. But wood is free, wood chips are not.

Yes, I have lots of free wood like fallen trees, etc... So, that is what I would use as well. But you might be able to get your wood chips for free as well.

It took me awhile, but I found that I could get all the free wood chips I could ever want or use at our local county landfill. They are just natural wood chips dumped off by arborists to get rid of them.

It only takes me about 15-20 minutes with a good 12-tine fork to fill up my small 4X8 foot 1-foot-high wall utility trailer. And I don't even break a sweat doing it. It's not too hard even for an old guy like me.

Chip drop
https://support.getchipdrop.com/article/35-is-chipdrop-active-in-my-area

That's a great option if there is anyone in your area that participates in the program. I know the arborists where I live have to pay a dumping fee at the landfill to get rid of their woodchips. So you would think it would be worth their time to do a chip drop at your place if they are in your area.

The only negative thing I have heard is that you might get a lot more woodchips than you wanted. Some of those arborists have big truck beds that hold a whole lot of wood chips. If they dump their load, they want it all dumped at once.

I signed up for Chip Drop years ago when I first learned about it. But I live out in the country and there was nobody locally in the program. When I found out I could get all the free wood chips I wanted at the county landfill, I took my name of the Chip Drop list and just fill up my trailer with a load from the landfill when I need it.

I certainly would not advocate for buying bags of mulch (wood chips) at the big box stores for a hügelkultur raised bed. I think that would be more expensive than buying bags of soil!

 

[gtaus]

Just a little update on some of my new hügelkultur raised beds...

This winter, in my garage, I built another four 4X4 foot pallet wood raised beds. I have just put them into place and leveled each bed off. My garden area there is on a slope, so the ground is not level, but the individual raised beds are now level.

The raised beds might not look even in the following photo, but they are. They just are not level with each other, if that makes sense. And the angle of this photo distorts some of the perspective, too...

The fourth raised bed is not in this photo. It went at the end of another row in the garden.

I have since filled up all the raised beds with hügelkultur logs for the base. Later, I will add a layer of organic materials to fill in the gaps, then the top 6-8 inches will be filled with a topsoil and chicken run compost mixed 1:1.

Here is a picture of one of my new pallet wood raised beds filled with logs...

As you can see, there are still lots of gaps and spaces to fill in. So, I dumped about five 5-gallon buckets full of pallet wood scraps into this bed. This was a suggestion from the Show Me Your Pallet Projects thread.

Previously, I was just burning those scrap pieces of wood in a fire ring. Makes more sense for me to use them in a hügelkultur raised bed. Wood is wood.

I also built a couple of 2X4 foot raised beds that I put along the backside of my chicken run fence...

My idea is to plant pole beans on the fence side, and maybe some shade plants like lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, etc.. away from the fence to fill up the space.

Imagine, if you will, having pole beans growing up that 6-foot-tall chicken run fencing and up and over on to the bird netting on top of the run. Then, lots of other plants to fill in the rest of the beds. That's my vision.

Since that picture, I have those two beds filled with logs as well. Those beds are coming together on schedule.

I could put another 8 feet of raised beds along that back fence if I want. I would have to build more raised beds, but that is fine with me.

In case I have not mentioned it before on this thread, it costs me less than $2.00 to build my pallet wood raised beds. The pallet wood is free, and I only pay for new screws for the 2X4 framing and brad nails for the boards on the side walls.

I have poor native soil where I live on lakeside property, so I have to buy a trailer full of topsoil from a local nursery. Dirt is not cheap. At least, quality topsoil is not cheap.

I paid about $60.00 last year for a bobcat scoop of topsoil. I figured that, after I fill the bottom half of the raised beds with hügelkultur wood, I end up spending maybe $10.00 per bed on the topsoil I use. I mix my topsoil with my chicken run compost in a 1:1 ratio. That reduces the amount of soil needed for the raised beds. If I did not use my free chicken run compost, I suspect I could double the cost of the topsoil fill to about $20.00 per 4X4 foot raised bed.

In any case, I have learned that it is better for me to spend some money upfront and get high quality topsoil for my raised beds and have plants that grown strong and healthy, providing lots of food to harvest. Nothing much grew well in my sandy native soil.

In theory, over time, the hügelkultur wood breaks down and feeds the soil making it better. But I don't want to wait years and years for that process to happen. So, I fill the top half of all my hügelkultur raised beds with that 1:1 mixture of high-quality topsoil and chicken run compost. My garden beds start off good, and only get better over time with all that hügelkultur wood in the bottom feeding the soil as it breaks down.

 

[fuzzi]

Another benefit of a Hugelkulture bed:

It's Wisp's bed, now.

 

[gtaus]

2X4 Foot Pallet Wood "Pole Bean" Raised Beds update

A week or so ago I made some half-normal-sized 2X4 foot pallet wood raised beds and put them alongside the back of my chicken run fence...

The idea is to plant pole beans on the side with the fencing, and then fill in the rest of the raised bed with other plants.

Like all my pallet wood raised beds, I used the hügelkultur method of filling them. First, the big logs like in this 4X4 foot pallet wood raised bed...

Then, I hit that with an organic layer of material to fill in the gaps and voids and to level off the bed leaving about 6-8 inches from the top...

Here you can see that I filled the beds with the rejects from my cement mixer compost sifter. Mostly, it is just not yet composted leaf litter. It should make an excellent organic layer.

On top of that, for the final 6-8 inches in the raised bed, I use a mixture of high-quality topsoil and chicken run compost mixed 1:1 as recommended by our local nursery "expert" in such things. The magic is in using both soil and compost mixed together for that final growing layer. Each compliments the other and provides materials not found in soil or compost alone. Well, that's the way he explained it to me.

Picture of the filled 2X4 foot "Pole Bean" raised beds with the topsoil and compost layer...

I still have about 3 weeks before our planting date, but it sure is nice to have that much finished off. I am doing all kinds of work outside, but if I get the time and energy, I would like to build another two of these 2X4 foot raised beds for that back wall of the chicken run fencing to use as a trellis.

I'm thinking peas with the edible pods. Sugar snap peas or something like that. I'll have to look into that some more.

In the meantime, I have been filling up all my other 4X4 pallet wood raised beds with hügelkultur wood and that next organic layer. I used up all my topsoil, so I will have to make a run to the garden center and have them load up a Bobcat scoop of Red River topsoil into my old utility trailer.

I always tell everybody that I build my raised beds for about $2.00 each, which covers the cost of new screws and brad nails. But the real cost is the money I have to spend on buying my topsoil at the garden center. Dirt is not cheap. Or, should I say that high quality topsoil costs about $60.00 per Bobcat scoop last year.

That makes it about $10.00 per 4X4 foot hügelkultur pallet wood raised bed. If I did not use the hügelkultur wood and organic layer, and mixing the topsoil with chicken run compost, I think it would cost me about $30.00 per bed for just the soil.

Another picture of the cement mixer compost sifter setup I use...

The rejected unfinished compost material in the grey wagon is what I have been using in the hügelkultur raised beds as that "organic" layer. The sifted finished chicken run compost in the black Gorilla cart is what I use to top off existing raised beds, or I will mix it 1:1 with topsoil for the new beds.

Anyways, I have already sifted out about 24 cubic feet of finished chicken run compost this spring in maybe one hour total of run time on the sifting machine. If I had to buy bags of compost at the big box stores, at the current prices, I figured it would be somewhere around $130.00. And I'm only halfway done for the springtime top offs and new bed fillings.

Lots of love goes out to my composting chickens, earning their keep with $$$ worth of compost they make for my gardens. Plus, I get eggs...

Crosspost Ref: Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

 

[DuckLady]

It's been a minute since I posted here. Yesterday I got my raised bed assembled. My husband got it for me for Christmas after I asked if he would help make beds from all the pallets we have around.
I put it on a huge piece of cardboard as a weed block and will start filling it with old logs and other pieces of branches. I'll have to go get dirt from the landscape place, as the 3 bags of dirt I got last week aren't going to do the job. I didn't think 8 x 4 x 4 was all that big. I have my 2 tomato plants, marigolds and onions and still need a cucumber, but won't plant until toward the end of May. We are still getting some frost.

I'm really excited about using this gardening method.

 

[gtaus]

If you are like me, your hügelkultur raised bed might only have about 6-8 inches of topsoil in the bed because you fill up the bottom half of the bed with logs and other organic matter. That works great for me in most instances. However, if you need more topsoil depth for a certain root plant, for example, what do you do?

@Smokerbill shared this picture of how he built a raised bed riser for planting his potatoes...

That riser concept is just a great idea if you want part of a raised bed to have more topsoil depth, but not necessarily needing to spend all that money to fill the entire bed with more dirt.

So easy to make, too. Just slap some boards together, put on the raised bed, and just fill that riser with however much more topsoil you need.

I am planning on doing that riser idea to maybe grow some daikon radishes, which can get longer than the typical 6 inches of topsoil I have in my hügelkultur raised beds.

 

[gtaus]

Here is an idea that I came up with to protect my two new hügelkultur raised beds that I plan on using for beans and peas....

I got out some pea seeds just for planting in my 2X4 "pole bean" raised beds. However, I discovered that the new beds I just had filled had been dug up pretty bad...

That bed was nice and level just the day before when I filled it. I'm thinking maybe squirrels got into it? Maybe birds? We have lots of rabbits running around the yard, but the raised beds are 16 inches high and I have never seen a rabbit jump up into a bed. If anyone knows the signs of these digging holes, let me know what is doing it. Thanks.

Well, I decided I would have to build a protective topper for the raised bed before I planted the pea (or bean) seeds. I used the 2X4's that I recently salvaged from the pallet made up entirely of 2X4's and put together with Torx screws. I made a couple of 2X4 foot frames with that wood and used some old chicken wire I had from previous projects...

Turned out to be quite a job using that old chicken wire. I had to stretch it out with one hand while stapling it with the other. If I had used brand new chicken wire, it would have gone much easier. But I did not want to go to town to buy new chicken wire for just a couple of small frames. So, I used what I had and got it done.

Here is a picture of the raised beds with the protective toppers on them....

That chicken wire topper should protect the young seeds and plants long enough to establish themselves. After that, I don't think they will get dug out by whatever has been digging in the raised beds.

I might make a few more of those chicken wire protective toppers. It is nice that I can use a couple of those 2X4 foot toppers and use them to protect my standard sized 4X4 foot raised bed if I need it.