- What happens when you bury logs in a raised bed?
Well, it's supposed to be to save money on soil
and to build healthy soil,
but I did it about three years ago,
and I'm asking myself, was this even a good idea?
When I bought this house, the first thing I did
was install pretty tall raised beds, about 15 of them.
And to save on soil costs,
my neighbor was cutting their trees down and I said,
"Hey, can I just grab these trunks
and toss them in the bottom of my raised beds?"
That was three years ago.
So in this video, we're gonna dig this bed up
and see exactly what's going on underneath the soil,
and if I would still recommend burying logs
as a soil building and soil cost saving technique.
Putting logs on the ground, and then mounding them up
with sticks, twigs, branches, and other organic matter
is a technique called Hugelkultur,
first coined in the 1960s in Germany.
But if we're being honest,
I'm pretty sure humans have been using it
for hundreds of years.
So if you're me three years ago,
you've got a big problem on your hands.
You have a ton of tall raised beds,
you don't wanna spend that much money on soil,
and I have a ton of wood lying around.
So what better way to combine all these three
and come up with a solution that saves on soil costs,
builds great soil, increases water retention,
and gets rid of a bunch of debris.
But you have to do it right,
and we've made some stumbles over the years
out in the front yard.
So if you don't use this technique correctly,
you'll run into a problem that you see right here,
which is the soil settling a little too quickly,
and if you do this really badly,
you'll see a six inch to maybe one foot drop in soil.
So remember the benefits.
I don't have to buy about 50% of the soil
at the bottom of this bed, but what's that benefit
if I actually have to add 50% more soil to the top?
But I think my friend and I have solved this problem.
So I have a perfectly new raised bed
that I have built out for you guys.
In fact, this is the next generation
of our birdies' raised beds.
We've been selling for about four years.
A ton of really cool improvements
that I'll get to in a second,
but I wanna show you how to build a Hugelkultur mound
in a bed the right way.
And for that, I need a little help.
Welcome back, Jacques, the garden hermit.
- I'm ready to build some Hugelkultur beds,
and I think we've both had the same settling issue
and we have the solution, but first,
we gotta get some big logs down in here.
- Let's do it.
The first step is to grab logs from around the property,
and if you don't have any, you can even buy
some cheap firewood, or ask a neighbor
if they have some to spare.
Put the largest logs in the corners
of your raised beds at the bottom,
which helps to prevent it from settling
or shifting over time.
And you might notice those shiny new bolts right there.
Well, these stainless steel rustproof nuts and bolts
are just one of the epic upgrades we made
to this next generation line of Birdies beds.
We also made some serious upgrades to our bracing solution,
which includes a rugged steel support channel,
and these clever interlocking links
which prevent your larger beds
from both bowing out and caving in.
And to top it all off, we added this cute Birdies logo.
So you know you are the proud owner
of the original metal raised bed
directly from us here at Epic Gardening.
Now here's our new adaptation.
If you add some soil or compost
into the crevices between the logs and spray your mixture,
you prevent most of the settling
from happening in the future.
As you get to about halfway filled,
transition to more small living materials
like older veggie cuttings from last season's garden,
fruit tree prunings, sticks, or twigs.
Next, move to unfinished compost.
In our case, some old pumpkin bines
from our giant pumpkin experiment were the perfect addition.
Then in the last eight to 12 inches, finish the bed off
with the absolute best soil you can source,
and fill it right to the top of the bed.
Oh, and by the way, we also resized our next generation
Birdie's beds from metric to imperial dimension.
So now every single bed is designed to the foot,
making designing your new garden that much easier.
- The bed's looking beautiful,
and I'm pretty sure we've fully solved that settling issue.
- Yeah, it might drop an inch or two,
which is actually a great opportunity
to add some compost instead of a foot, which makes you cry.
So problem solved.
However, we did dig up a bed
that we buried logs in three years ago,
and you will not believe what we found.
This is the bed we have chosen.
We have to get this off and see what's inside.
I'm actually really excited, Jacques,
because I've never done it before.
- Yeah. - So let's go ahead and do it.
We found out a secret technique for getting this off
that's really easy.
- [Jacques] Gotta start with a little bit of shimming
and some prying.
- [Kevin] Moment of truth.
- Let's see. - Let's go.
Whoa, look at those roots.
First thoughts?
- There's definitely some wood down here.
- There's some wood and it feels a little soft.
It doesn't feel, actually, it feels kind of spongy.
- [Jacques] Yeah, parts of it definitely do.
- But here's what I'm noticing, right outta the gate,
take a look at these are all pepper plants up here.
You've got your mulch layer right there,
which for the most time, most of the time we use straw
so obviously that's what we're using.
But then you've got, look how deep these roots are going.
- That's wild 'cause, you know, a lot of plants
I think stay pretty shallow, but these pepper roots,
they're going deep.
- That's like at least what, 30?
It's a 30 inch bed, it's least 30 inches deep.
Wild, so here's what I'm gonna try.
I'm gonna just uproot one and see kind of what comes out.
- [Jacques] I was expecting these roots to go with it.
- Well, you know what else is true though, right?
I mean, if you think about no dig gardening,
which is the principle of never tilling your soil.
You're cutting the plants at this stem level
and you're just letting the roots die off.
So we might actually be seeing roots from seasons past.
- Oh, that's really cool. - Just kind of
sitting down in here.
- [Jacques] Here's a piece of that wood.
It just flaked right off.
- Look at this cross section here.
You can see the top layer is mostly flakable away.
I can kind of shred that with my finger.
But I mean, it's only made it
what Jacques like half a centimeter in
'cause this lighter material looks pretty undeterred.
- [Jacques] Looks like it hasn't been hit by the fungus yet.
- [Kevin] Yeah, not at all. I mean, look at that.
That looks very, very solid.
It feels very solid as well.
- We're already finding
a lot of interesting stuff on the outside,
but in the middle center of the bed,
that's why we're gonna be really fascinating.
- Yeah.
Oh, I just saw something I hate.
Little grub. - Something you love?
- Get outta here.
Oh, look at this though.
Got some really nice.
- Definitely have some- - Mycelium right there.
That's a really good sign.
- Yeah. - All right, here too.
- [Jacques] Yeah, that's wild actually.
- You know what, you know what I've noticed though
is this will happen sometimes when you put chips on
as a top mulch that make their way down.
You'll get that sort of fungal colonization
of the wood chips. - Yeah, that makes sense.
- So this is what happens
when you're doing like a standard mulch.
- It even smells like a mushroom.
- Does it smell like a mushroom?
- Yeah.
- That smells pretty good. - Yeah, it actually does.
- Fry that up, you got yourself a stew.
- You got myself dinner. - Yeah.
What I think is happening here though is remember,
when you do a hugel mound in a raised bed,
you're not just putting logs, you're putting the twigs,
the branches, the sticks, the leaves.
Some of those might just be poking up
just a bit too high and getting fungally dominated.
Look at how compacted this is right here though.
It's almost like a wooden shelf.
- This is hard.
- It's relatively hard,
but I will say it's not hard enough
that nothing can go through.
No, the roots are in there. - The roots
are penetrating it just fine, but it just seems like
really decent loamy mixture here.
- And everything you've put in here
is basically potting mix, right?
- Pretty much potting mix.
I mean, obviously complex with top dressing with compost.
This about had three years,
I would say roughly five or six toppings of compost
over those seasons, you know?
- And it's all been worked in, I guess.
Look at that. - What happened?
- Did I just hit a log? - No, right here.
That side profile.
- Oh, that side pro.
- [Jacques] That's like basically a mushroom in there.
- I mean, that's the mycelial layer.
So it very well could be.
Wow, look at this though.
I mean, that's just-
- It's like actually- - That's alive as hell.
- [Jacques] It's creating its own like,
little sponge in here.
- Oh.
- Oh, that is wood. - That is wood.
Look.
Look it right there.
See that lighter touch right there?
- [Jacques] Yeah, hundred percent.
- [Kevin] That's probably just a wood chip
that got accidentally shoveled in.
- [Jacques] And then they just kind of masked around it.
- [Kevin] Look at that, that's fascinating.
- That's so cool. - You've got like,
an entire world like developing right around that.
- Amazing. - Really cool.
- Okay, here we go.
- Okay, we struck gold.
- I'm seeing.
- Oh! - What looks like wood.
- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
This was wood.
- A hundred percent.
Look at, we got a worm down here. We got a worm deep.
- Wow, look at this guy.
- [Jacques] It's living in the wood.
- [Kevin] This guy's deep as hell.
- And what's amazing- - And that's a baby.
- Oh yeah. - That's a baby worm.
- [Jacques] But look at all these roots too.
They're inside the wood.
- Oh, peel that away. - Random life on here.
- I don't know why I start talking like this.
I'm so excited.
Here's what I'm noticing.
I don't know if I'm right, but this is what I'm noticing.
Look at this right here.
This little shelf, to me, this was wood
and it's eaten down roughly an inch or so
to the new hard layer top.
So this actually wasn't the top.
That's my prediction.
- Honestly, it makes sense.
- Because look, if I flake this away,
like look at this, feel this material in my hand.
Feel that. That's not soil.
- No. - That's definitely-
- [Jacques] No, it's like air.
Well, there's chunks of wood throughout it too.
- Oh my God.
I would say you won't see this fully, fully break down
for maybe two decades.
You know, it very well,
and it's actively trying to break.
It's just think about it.
It's surface area, right?
This is the reason that composting works better
when you have a bunch of tiny particles.
The bigger the particle, the longer it's gonna last.
The smaller the particle, the quicker it's gonna break down.
Surface area, I mean, look at these tiny little millipedes.
They're not coming straight for this log.
Like, they want a little chunk to break down.
- And look at how the roots, when they hit the log,
they kind of went alongside it.
- Yeah, they shaved right dow,.
- Because they couldn't get through the hard part yet.
Here's another one right along the boundary.
This is what it looks like.
- Oh.
- [Jacques] So there's no proli.
It's just basically warm poop probably.
- [Kevin] It's probably all castings.
This has that grainy texture of like castings to me.
- [Jacques] So they're munching.
- Yeah, they'd be out here munching.
- [Jacques] They're definitely munching.
- But you know what I don't see is termites, which is great.
I'm kinda curious what's on the true bottom.
- [Jacques] Do you want me to keep pushing up?
You got it. Okay.
- All right.
This isn't rock hard.
Like, you could scrape away not too much, but you could.
So you have like-
- Quite hard underneath.
- Super hard. - That layer
is definitely breaking down.
- You have like a film of like,
I don't know, less than a millimeter.
That's probably even breaking down.
- But then here.
- Yeah, that just coming right off.
- Even the wood itself on the corner here.
That's just dancing.
Look at that.
- That's rotted.
- Okay, so let me instruct this though.
Take a look.
This, nearly nothing. Why?
Because it was right up against the edge.
There wasn't enough moisture
to support the life on this side.
- [Jacques] You could even see the saw marks.
- [Kevin] Pure bottom.
- There's some worms. - There's some worms built.
- [Jacques] And this is the native soil now
at the bottom there. - Yeah, now we're at
the native soil.
- It's fascinating that it's actually
not fully broken down yet to me.
- Yeah, I agree. - Like, you thought
the log would be gone?
- I didn't think it'd be gone,
but I thought all like the lignin, the hard stuff
would've been mostly gone.
This is very impressive.
- You know what I'd be really curious about
is if you were to drill holes straight through the logs,
a bunch of 'em, and then use it as structure,
but then you'd actually have
a lot more surface area worm in there.
The worms would get in and they'd be able
to eat it out from the inside.
So Jacques, I think we've learned
that the logs are still gonna be here,
especially the big ones.
After three years, five years, maybe even six years,
but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
- Yeah, 'cause it's still saving the volume on the soil.
It's building healthy soil, retaining water,
looks great everywhere around it.
- Yeah, so it's a great method.
Still use it.
Obviously some tweaks we'd make,
but this is far from the only method
you can make a mistake on when growing in your raised bed.
So check this video out right here.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.