I’ve been kicking around the idea for some Raised Beds with a Twist for quite some time now. With inspiration from Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast and Paul Wheaton of Permies fame, I decided to try my own variation of hugelkultur/woody beds. I wrote about Hugelkultur last year.
On a 1/3 of an acre suburban lot I lack the space to build true Hugelkultur mounds, which tend to be about 6 feet high. With my wife looking to have a garden space of her own ( and not deal with my garden craziness) I build her Cedar raised beds that are 4′ x 8′ x 1′. I laid a nice thick piece of cardboard down to kill of the sod and put in a bunch of rotting wood.
The wood has been “seasoning” behind my shed for a few years as I’ve dreamed of giving this project a go for some time now. 
It kills 2 birds with one stone for me as heating with wood usually leaves me with some undesirable pices and the woody beds seemed like a natural way to get rid of it. I’m hoping this little experiment works out as I’m hoping my hybrid Woody Beds will cut down on my water needs and provide some long term fertility to the beds. These beds are being incorporated into the landscaping of the backyard so they will remain in place for some years to come and hopefully I’ll be able to comment on their progress for years to come.
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This might be a good idea, I’ll be watching to find out how it works out.
I still have some more garden beds to build for this season. Might do this as well with the trees I cut down last year. Got my first batch of FREE compost for the ecology center in Holtsville this past weekend! 🙂
I get a lot of compost from Hotlsville as well. I’m glad we were able to get the Town to keep The Ecology Site open!
Interesting post! I’ve been planning on doing something similar after I watched some of Jack’s TSP video series on the beds he built at his old homestead. The way he did it is a lot more labor intensive, especially without the backhoe. He dug down about 20″ below ground level and filled in the hole with wood then covered that with a compost/topsoil mix. Like you, I have some old cut tree limbs I was thinking of using for this project. (my wife and neighbors are getting tired of looking at the rotting logs along the perimeter of my property from a tree that fell down last spring!)Raised beds are the way to go for me as I’m getting tired of double digging my 5×20, solid clay plot. I’ve been adding compost and manure for a couple of years now but it’s still a monumental task to dig it up. I’m looking forward to following the progress with your raised beds.
I was inspired a bit by that video. I’m hoping these turn out well. Thanks for the comment!
My kids LOVE going to the Holtsville Ecology Site!
I’ve been increasing my number of un-raised garden beds for a couple years now. Every year I dig up a couple more beds. dump some wood (I have the same “seasoned” source as you describe) some composted stuff or even a big bucket of sloppy gone-bad vegetables/fruits, old leaves, and other stuff that will rot away well, then pile the dirt back on. I’ve never had good luck the first year on these beds, but subsequent years have gone better. Good luck.
I built a strawberry bed that is 4’X 8’X 30″ high with a two and a half inch pipe around the top.Filled it up with soil to 7″ from the top. It has a one piece one inch pipe framed chicken wire cover that tilts up from either side to keep the deer out.This is all built with steel and painted silver so it won’t absorb heat during the winter that starts them growing and freezing back killing them. Works very well for us nearing 80 year old’s and we can pick the berries leaning against the top pipe without bending over.
How did these beds go this year? I’ve heard they can take a few years to really get going, but it sounds like you used partially rotted wood and I wonder if things sped up? Did you heavily mulch the tops?
I’m considering installing some raised hugelkultur beds for a client to help make watering less of an issue. I thought I might combine the perforated weeping tile of a wicking bed or even just a PVC pipe going all the way down to a corner, to allow long term watering.
Thoughts??
Lisa,
The beds did really well. We used a good mix of partially rotted wood and REALLY rotted wood. The rest of the bed was filled with a 50/50 top soil/compost mixture. We grew tomatoes, eggplant, beans, peppers, crookneck squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and marigolds. We stayed away from root vegetables to avoid running down into the wood. We did need to use re-bar for anything that needed staking because more traditional stakes couldn’t “bull” through the wood to stay upright. We typically mulch pretty heavily in our gardens and these beds were no exception. We are actually getting them ready for the Fall today and have decided to “rest” them till the Spring. We raked in some Blood Meal and mulched them with straw.
I like the idea of adding the PVC pipe!