[Muddywaters]

Has anyone tried making Hugelkultur compost beds? ( basically composting logs) A mate of mine is trying it. I am a bit sceptical but it sounds interesting and wondered what the pros and cons were.

[GrowinGrowinGone]

The videos I have seen (on youtube) of Sepp Holzer doing this on his land, it looks fantastic and nobody could argue it works for him.  It does contradict the idea of burying any wood in the soil, as people say it robs the soil of nitrogen to decompose.  Pro's - less watering, less weeding maybe, it's raised so wont be to wet.  Cons - you need a lot of material, and a lot of work to construct 1. 

[Annen]

I've got one bed on my plot which I made into a hugelkultur bed, the year before last.  I used it to lift the growing medium out of the wet end of my plot, which flooded at every heavy rain. It works at that quite well and I grew tomatillos and squashes on it last year.  But I think my raised beds work just as well at giving a well drained growing area. When the logs underneath finally rot down I will probably just build another raised bed in its place.   


I think it ( the hugelkultur) works best if you can construct really big mounds and as far as I can see it works best in a pretty dry climate, as it stores rainwater and prevents storm runoff.

[Muddywaters]

Thanks both. Yes I thought the problem of reduced nitrogen would be a huge negative and need constant re-adjustment. I live in Manchester, so not known for its drought conditions! I will watch with interest how my mate gets on.

[JayG]

Strictly speaking the woody material 'borrows' rather than 'robs' the nitrogen from the soil, although it probably should be regarded as an extremely long term loan when it comes to large quantities of very woody material.

It's possible that the water retention properties of the material help to offset that to some extent by reducing the amount of leaching of soil nitrogen, especially on more free-draining soils.

Not sure how many people have ready access to free or cheap logs to use for this purpose - in many areas they're hard to come by due to the popularity of domestic log burners!