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Scott Reed
Hi all. I’m trying to plan for growing a bunch of herbs next year. We currently have a very large back to eden style garden in its 3rd year, and it’s become impossible to manage the “weeds”. The placement was bad, and I work full time and we have 2 small children with another on the way, so our time is limited. This year a bunch of “weeds” have gone to seed, including many noxious ones (leafy spurge). The area it is in is next to our neighbors property, which has a massive unmanaged noxious weed problem … there are other areas of our 1.7 acre property that would have been a better spot for the garden .. but I did not realize that when we started making it in our first spring here.
Long story short, I’m considering switching to raised beds in a different area of our property. I’m thinking this will help us keep on top of it, since we’ll have a more controlled area for growing instead of having everything in rows.
I was looking into the hugelkultur beds in Docs presentations, and those sound really great. I even have a bunch of scrap roof metal I could use to build the beds, and I love the idea of building them high and making them easy to work in. However, I’m concerned about my ability to source suitable wood for this. Slide 25 of “Herbal Gardening: Principles & Strategies” says not to use high-resin trees like pine. We live in North Idaho, and almost all of our trees are exactly like this .. we pretty much only have coniferous trees (pine trees) around here. I can go pickup free rotting wood from the national forests around here, but if I can’t use pines.. it’s going to be a lot harder to do this, and take a lot more work searching for the few birch trees, etc. that I can find.
Wood chips, on the other hand, are really easily sourced for me. I can get loads and loads dropped from ChipDrops. So I have also considered using the back to eden style, but in raised beds (wood chips placed on top of the soil, not mixed in). I’d still have to bring in topsoil.
I’d love to hear others thoughts on which approach they think will be best… thank you!
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After reading about hugelkultur on some other sites, they don’t seem to share as much caution about pine as long as it’s not fresh, and there are smaller pieces of wood (branches) to feed the bed as well. I’ve got millions of acres of national forest all around me for finding rotting wood in every stage possible of decomposition. Has anyone used pine for their beds?
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Greg Boggs
So I have never tried a hugelkultur bed, so to chatgpt I went for the idea on using Pine, and this is what it gave me
Resin & acidity
Fresh pine (especially green logs with sap) contains resins and is more acidic. This can slow decomposition and temporarily tie up nitrogen in the soil.
Over time, the acidity tends to balance out, but in the short term it may affect plant growth if the bed isn’t balanced with other materials.
Best practice
Use older, partially rotted pine if you have it—this will decompose faster and be less resinous.
If you’re using fresh pine, place it deep in the hugel bed where it won’t directly contact plant roots.
Mix in other woods (hardwoods if available) so the breakdown is more balanced.
Add nitrogen-rich material (grass clippings, manure, compost) on top to offset pine’s tendency to lock up nitrogen while it decomposes.
Bottom line: Pine is not the ideal wood for hugelkultur compared to hardwoods, but it will still work—just expect slower decomposition and plan to balance it out with other materials.
Hope that gives you some ideas!
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Yeah, my thought was to go out into the national forest and look around for partially decomposed pines fallen on the ground. As you know, we don’t have many hardwoods around here.
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Lisa Derksen
I have about a dozen hugelkulture beds that I love, but mine are mostly poplar. When I moved here, there was a mostly poplar forest north of my house. When those trees were taken down, I moved them into beds and am using poplars as edging for the beds. The only drawback I’ve found is if I seed my carrots on top of one of those logs, I get 90degree carrots! I’m in Alberta, and trees don’t decompose as fast here with our long winters.
One comment about pine & their acidity, I recommend doing at least one bed that is acidic for plants like blueberries, bilberries, black cohosh, Oregon grape, etc. I’ve used pine & spruce for that. Best wishes in growing your own herbs & hopefully food too.
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This reply was modified 3 weeks, 2 days ago by
Lisa Derksen.
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