My attempt at Huglekultur

Since I read about this, I've been itching to try it. I'm curious because I'm of Scandinavian descent (among other things). There were always old stories in our area about how the first settlers buried trees as they cleared the land. When I was a kid, I thought it was stupid. Leter, I understood that it would be a good way to smooth out your field to throw the unuseable wood into any low spots. Now, having read about huglekultur, I am wondering if it may have been an old practice in Northern Europe. In any event, I'm trying it out with an old pile of birch and poplar.

For starters, dug a hole 3 foot by 8 foot and about 1 foot deep.

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Filled it to the brim with old wood.


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Made the bed using some hemlock planks that the previous owner had left. A layer of chicken manure on top of the wood and then filled with the soil plas some compost. Not much for a garden this year but I'm glad I got one under way. I'm thinking it's going to take a few years to assess if it really works as well as they say.

Also using some old patio stones that were removed when I made a better deck. Should help keep the more invasive things out plus make it nicer to walk around, especially in the wet.

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why not? Looks good!
I thought maybe you were going to burn the wood and use the bed of ashes for a base?

Ah, the hugelbate (hugelbeet?) I built one too, but mine was too small at the base, too tall, water ran off and there was no way to water the plants. After two seasons I dismantled it. I think the idea is a solid one, but you have to build it right and it looks like you did.

Note: do NOT bury willow sticks that you've just cut. THEY GROW!

I think Hillbilly has experimented with these too. There was an article about them in Small farm Canada a few years back, that's where I got my idea from. Keep us posted on how this works out.

Very cool! Can`t wait to see how it works for you. I have a copy of a book that was originally printed in the 1800`s about running the household. In the gardening section it recommends burying large bones under many fruit trees and vegetables. I was doing this already, but it was good to know it wasn`t an off the wall idea of mine. Anytime we butchered something I would dig a hole and put in the head and entrails, and plant a tree on top or build a flower bed over it.

Good idea on the bones.

That reminds me. We also had a feed of lobster at that point so a whole bunch of lobster shells also went into the bottom of the soil layer. Figured it couldn't hurt.

So is this a way to keep the nutrients in the soil? I could see that with the bones and shells but how does this HUGLEKULTUR work.

Would you be so kind as to explain Fowler?

I was thinking exactly what Uno said about the willows

Wow, now that is one honkin' hole you dug, must have been a whole lotta work. What a wonderful thing. I remember Uno talking about her huglebeet, smiling, I wonder if the spelling that you spelled it is correct and hers is wrong. Not meaning that anyone is wrong, but sometimes there are things misspelled in publications and we learn different ways of spelling. Neither here nor there, but what a most wonderful thing. And I think burying these kinds of things aids in soil development. Lots of people bury fish heads in their gardens too, just like Succellus farm did with the animal heads and entrails. Good for the soil for surely. As times goes on, tell us more. I like the idea of the cement around the raised bed, for surely, nicer to walk on this than muck. Is your area a wet place? For some reason I think of Newfoundland as quite similar to coastal BC. Right? Wrong? Good work. Have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.

Ruffledfeathers wrote:So is this a way to keep the nutrients in the soil? I could see that with the bones and shells but how does this HUGLEKULTUR work.

Would you be so kind as to explain Fowler?

I was thinking exactly what Uno said about the willows

This site explains it better than I could.

They do list willows as a good tree to use but that they should be dry. Ha can you imagine using fresh willow branches?


Hugelkultur is nothing more than making raised garden beds filled with rotten wood. This makes for raised garden beds loaded with organic material, nutrients, air pockets for the roots of what you plant, etc. As the years pass, the deep soil of your raised garden bed becomes incredibly rich and loaded with soil life. As the wood shrinks, it makes more tiny air pockets - so your hugelkultur becomes sort of self tilling. The first few years, the composting process will slightly warm your soil giving you a slightly longer growing season. The woody matter helps to keep nutrient excess from passing into the ground water - and then refeeding that to your garden plants later.

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*Bookmarked* Thanks for this Fowler, we've got lots of cleaning up to do of trees.

I figure it has to be an improvement. Cynthia mentioned digging the hole was a lot of work. It was, but not as much as it should have been. Turned out that Brainiac previous owner had trucked in sand for fill. Then figured he could garden on top of it. That bed is sitting where he had his garden. Once I got down past the few inches of topsoil (much of which I had made over the years of conditioning) it was as nice a sand as you might hope to find. Could never figure out why my garden didn't do well there. Now I get it.

Next, to make another. Doubt it will be ready to grow more than maybe some fast beans or radishes (which I don't even like) but we'll see.

I did some reading thank you!! Its is a cool idea but I know here in BC ants are an issue. That seems to be a big draw for free housing for those little monsters.

How are your ants out there?

Ruffledfeathers wrote:I did some reading thank you!! Its is a cool idea but I know here in BC ants are an issue. That seems to be a big draw for free housing for those little monsters.

How are your ants out there?

Our ants all come to the house, and are plentiful. Why live outside in the weather, when there is a perfectly fine home to invade? At least that's what the ants do at our place...
Hope your raised bed does well Fowler. With the copious amounts of rain lately, any ground level beds better be growing rice.
We added all our off cuts from the greenhouse to the bottom of our raised bed. Hopefully it doesn't matter we never dug down first. The beds are 16 inches deep, so we hoped to cut down on the amount of fill we needed. Doubt the cedar will break down very fast though.

We have ants but (supposedly) they prefer sand to organic matter.  Hoping the manure and wood discourages them.  Lots of sandy fill around for them to live in.

Auntievil, your house ants aren't big and black are they?  Had Carpenter ants a while back and they were hard to get rid of.  Wouldn't take any of the store bought baits.  Finally got them with;

1 part borax
1 part flour
1 part icing sugar
add enough water to make a syrup so they can suck it up

They were gone in 2 days.

prairie dog wrote:It sounds like you're composting the same as nature does in the wild ? If I can ask , why not just use bark off of  from what I can see is poplar  in the pictures ? It would break down faster , not attract ants and should be readily available if you have a fairly large plot of them close by ? They seem to die off more then other trees ? I cut down a bunch of poplar a few years ago and there was one that was just to big for me to use so I left it on the ground ? It is now completely decomposed , mostly due to ants eating it from the inside .Would shavenings from a saw mill not work just as good ? and they would break down faster and you wouldn't have any sinking with time ? I have used them to fill in low areas on the property and after a few years they just disappear ?

I had thought the same thing, but it looks like having large wood that doesn't break down is part of the system (creates air pockets, acts as a spongy water reservoir, etc).  I was throwing in lots of bark and small branches too.  Tried to fill up any gaps.

Around here, its the carpenter ants that riddle the old logs as they make a nest in it.  I don't think they fancy living underground so I think the buried logs should be OK.  Have to wait and see of course, all part of the learning curve.

No, these aren't carpenter ants -thankfully! Will try your mix though, as the commercial ones are not working.
Will try the sawdust for our low spots. The peat tends to end up very mucky...

auntieevil wrote:, these aren't carpenter ants -thankfully! Will try your mix though, as the commercial ones are not working.
Will try the sawdust for our low spots. The peat tends to end up very mucky...

We don't have the carpenter ants as well , more a smaller black ant that will kill of a living poplar  by eating the inside  core of the tree ? I have cut down some large poplar only to find that the outer  two inches of tree was actually wood ? the rest was a honey comb left over from the ants !

We have at least 3 kinds of ants. The big black ones some winged some not, the smaller red ant looks dangerous could bite (haha) and the small black ants.

We went commercial on there butts and got some ant killer for the bigger red ones and wiped out most of 3 colonies on the road side of our property. I will have to find the container of what it was cause I can't remember right now. We still have to dispatch with the rest of the little monsters.

I will for sure try that borax recipe. thx

Ruffledfeathers wrote:We have at least 3 kinds of ants. The big black ones some winged some not, the smaller red ant looks dangerous could bite (haha) and the small black ants.

We went commercial on there butts and got some ant killer for the bigger red ones and wiped out most of 3 colonies on the road side of our property. I will have to find the container of what it was cause I can't remember right now. We still have to dispatch with the rest of the little monsters.

I will for sure try that borax recipe. thx

The big black ones are the reproductive carpenter ants (if I recall my reading correctly).  They are the ones that get sent out to start new colonies.  The working carpenter ant isn't a whole lot bigger than a normal black ant.  Did a lot of reading on them when we had them.

Neato! I saw this somewhere else, presented in a different way, where you basically heaped logs above ground and then covered them with dirt, which to me, seemed like a great way to lower your property's resale value quickly. Because what buyer doesn't love a lawn full of mogul hills?

But the way you've done it is nice and tidy and logical!