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| It's a generally held belief that incorporating wood chips into your soil will deplete the available nitrogen. How does this jibe with hugelkultur, which encourages burying wood and immediately planting the site?
I live in a new house on a 1/2 acre of Georgia red clay and have resorted to wood chips as a cover for my cardboard sheet mulch. I also have access to logs with which I am about to begin using according to hugelkultur methods. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| Is this the same as the "German Mound"? The Hugelkultur has a topping of soil and compost, as I read about the subject. Plus, not all practitioners plant right away. Also, some plant cover crops. |
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| yes it is the german mound/hill and the difference is it is covered with more than enough medium to plant in while the timber breaks down. we sued similar in our bale garden len |
Here is a link that might be useful: lens straw bale garden
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- Posted by dottyinduncan z8b coastal BC (My Page) on Fri, Jan 20, 12 at 14:38
| I tried filling a raised bed with new wood chips, putting soil on top and planting. So I guess this is a form of Hugelkultur. It has been largely unsuccessful. Lavender grows in it, but almost everything else I have tried has failed. I have resorted to landscaping this area with large pots filled with proper topsoil and garden art. Even weeds don't grow in it. |
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| From what I have read, incorporating the chips into the soil is not hugelkultur. The chips should be serparate, under the topsoil which is put on top of the chips. The chips should be saturated with water before covering with topsoil. I read anywhere from 2 inches to 6 inches of topsoil is placed on top of the wood. Some people plant covercrops of legumes the first year so that the nitrogen given off by the legumes will help with any nitrogen immobilization from all the rotting wood. Root crops are generally the crops to plant initially as they have fewer nutrient requirements....potatoes, carrots etc. I've no experience with this, only what I have read in my search for information on the subject. I intend to put a hugelkultur bed in place soon. |
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- Posted by lazygardens PhxAZ%3A Sunset 13 (My Page) on Sun, Jan 22, 12 at 15:19
| It's a question of surface area, because any nitrogen depletion only happens at the soil/wood interface. A 6" diameter log has a much smaller surface area than that same log turned into wood chips. If you use wood chips as mulch, only the soil right next to the mulch will see depletion(if any). Mixing those same chips into the soil increases the interface area a lot, and you might get depletion. |
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- Posted by emgardener (My Page) on Tue, Jun 5, 12 at 16:41
| I put in a hugelkultur beds this year in heavy clay soil. The squash planted are doing excellent! In the last 3 years, I have not been able to grow squash well in this clay, so I'm quite excited this year. Putting a pile of chips in the ground will form an impenetrable barrier for plant roots, so I would expect plants do very poorly. In hugelkultur/"log culture" the plant roots can grow in the soil around the logs and still go very deep (while attaching themselves to the logs). Logs in the ground would be much different than chips. Nitrogen tie up hasn't been a problem, I have (and will) just add an organic liquid fertilizer until the leaves turn dark green. In the movie "Back to Eden" a gardener used blood meal to overcome the lack of nitrogen when planting in wood chips used as surface mulch. |
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- Posted by lisascenic (My Page) on Wed, Jun 6, 12 at 1:08
| I'm clearly too lazy to dig a trench big enough to hold logs. I dig in wood chips because I get them for free, and they dematerialize in six months. I have concrete-like silty soil, and I'm very keen to incorporate as much organic material into the ground as possible. Compost, decomposing wood chips, used rabbit bedding, all disappear into my beds. |
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| Last year, my brother and I built a 50'x28' back to eden garden. Purchased 2 dump trucks full of organic compost and our tomatoes and peppers were awesome. lol Then we learned about double digging, hugelkultur and keyhole gardening. So... this year, we decided to build 8'x4' beds while incorporating everything we've learned about gardening so far. Since we vermicompost, we had plenty of it (about 3 yards) plus all the compost from last year. So we dug a few 8'x4'x2' deep and double diged the bottom. Then we filled with logs, branches, leaves, chicken manure, shredded paper, food (5 gal buckets full for each box) and added plenty of water ("hugelkultur"). We put a 5 gallon bucket (with holes at the bottom) in the middle of these boxes to be at 1" above the gardening boxes to add food as we would normally do for vermicompost ("keyhole"). We them mixed the better soil (top soil mixed with some clay) that we took out and began to add layers of this soil with compost and vermicompost until we reached the surface. We built these beds 12" above ground with big logs (about 6" in diameter) and then another level with old pallets we had. After we reached the top of the boxes, we got lucky with rain and allowed it to get water. Next day the soil gave in about 1 inch, which we then added it back in vermicompost. We have been transplanting and soon will begin to add wood chips to the top, at least 4-6" high (back to eden gardening). I can't wait to see how everything comes out. So far we have done 3 boxes like these but now even my mother (67y/o) wants to dig more boxes. lol The whole family got involved with the system while having a blast. The kids loved digging since they get dirty and don't need to worry about messing anything up. Our chickens/roosters (and dogs) though we were building a new log house for them to play so we had to put a small fence around the box and then a net above it to keep them away. :-) |
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