Burying Stumps in Sandy Soil

Here's an idea for using hugelkultur in sandy soil.
Ideally for sandy soil you'd want lots of rotten wood dug in for water retention.
However, if you only have dry (not green) unrotted wood available, you could still get benefits from hugelkultur right away.

Bury stumps, branches, split firewood, vertically in the ground about 3-4" below the soil surface.
Then plant right over the buried wood. The plant roots should grow down underneath the wood. The wood will retain a lot of water and slowly "drip" it out the bottom unto the roots, feeding them with a decomposed wood stream and any fertilizer you add (urea, urine, bloodmeal, fishmeal, ...).  This is what I observed in "stump containers".  See:
http://lowcostvegetablegarden.blogspot.com/2012/09/eggplant-stump-branch-pot-comparison.html
http://lowcostvegetablegarden.blogspot.com/2013/02/rose-hugel-pot.html


Overtime as the wood rots it should hold even more water and since it is large chunks of wood, they won't wash away deeper into the sand with rains.

My own soil is clay, so I've never tested this, but just thought about it after visiting my parents in sandy soil Florida. I would not do this in clay soil.  In clay soil, I bury the stumps about 1' under the soil surface.  The stumps wick away excess moisture without drying out the soil.  Underneath stumps in clay soil, it gets very wet.  In the 1-2 inches right underneath a stump in clay soil, I found, that roots will not grow, because it is so wet & mucky.

Hugel hole preperation

Last year I prepared and planted cucumbers and tomatoes in 3 hugel holes with mediocre results.

Just improved/redid the holes this year using what I learned from last year's experience.

In one hole I had put in horizontally buried branches and also mixed in some leaves. It did poorly. Just adding logs into clay soil isn't enough to make a good growing bed.  So I redug this hole out. 2' deep, 2' diameter.

These were the branches I dug out.

Put in vertical stump and branches about 10" to 1' in length. Made sure I left one shovelful depth between the soil surface and the stump. This is so I can easily do a "single dig" in future years, i.e. dig in more organic matter one shovelful deep.

 Then I added wood chips and soil to fill in the hole.  Alternated 3 shovelfuls of chips, then 3 shovelfuls of dirt. This seems like a lot of wood chips, but after just one summer this clay soil absorbs all but the largest chips.

In this hugel hole last year, I just threw in a stump vertically and mixed in a little bit of leaves. The cucumber plant did very well in this hole. The vertical stump seems to wick away excess moisture will keeping the dirt just the right amount of moistness for the plants.  The stump in the ground was from last year.

Added some branches on top of the stump, just enough to keep the wood a shovel depth below the surface.

Then 3 shovelfuls wood chips, 3 shovelfuls dirt, ... After done the pile is 1 foot high. This will be ready to plant in 2 months, mid-April.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the soil looks like at the end of the summer. This is the first time I've added so many wood chips at once.

Garden bed construction

This last summer I experimented a lot with different growing methods in my garden and in containers.
Based on the results, this fall I redid my garden beds using:

1.  Vertical hugelkultur
2.  Large quantities of wood chips dug in the soil.
In small test beds this year these 2 techniques did the best.


Just completed 4 beds, here are pictures of building one.

Dug down average of 2.5 feet. At that depth I hit a layer of pottery-like clay that would be unusable for garden soil.
This bed is 3.5 feet wide and 12' long.

Added wood scraps, from splitting wood, at the bottom.

First layer of vertical stumps, packed closely together.

Added dirt mixed in with wood chips and then put a 2nd layer of vertical stumps.

More dirt and lots of wood chips.

Added a 3rd layer of branches, partially rotted and began building retaining walls from logs and 1/2" rebar.

No pictures, but did add a 4th layer of larger branches placed horizontally on top of here.

 

Here are 2 completed beds, built with retaining walls.

Also made 2 other beds without retaining walls. Those ones only had 2 layers of logs, one vertical, one horizontal. So they did not raise the soil level as much.

The only cost for these beds was the rebar (~$30).  All the logs, stumps, and chips were free. Lot of digging though.  Didn't get a chance to go to the gym for the last 6 weeks :)

Roughly the top 6" or more of soil in each bed does not contain logs or branches, just dirt and wood chips.  This is to make it easy in future years to dig in more wood chips with a normal shovel if this will be needed.  The soil is very thick clay and I believe I'll need to dig in more chips in a couple years.

Shock & Wilt Free Transplanting

After seeing how seedlings in soil blocks do not wilt, even in 100 degree F heat, I tried many ways to get this same result after transplanting the seedlings in the ground.

But it seemed that every time I took a soil block seedling and transplanted it in the ground, it wilted in heat.  Each time I had covered the soil block entirely with ground dirt.

It seems the soil block not only supplied enough water, but also air to the roots. When I buried the soil block it cut off easy access to air.  This happened even when I transplanted a soil block plant into a 15 gallon air-pot.

Finally I tried this transplanting setup in the diagram and it has worked great so far, no wilting even in hot weather for cucumber transplants.

Basically grow your transplant in a net pot, or repot a 2-3" transplant into a 5" net pot.
Then dig a 5" hole in the garden where you want the plant.  Put the net pot in, only bury the bottom half of the net pot.  Put woodchips in the remaining top up to and over the surface of the net pot.

Now the roots can grow out into the soil, but also get a lot of air b/c of the unburied top half.
I believe it is important not to use peat moss as your seedling mix, because the top half may dry out and become hydrophobic, causing severe plant wilt.

I used soil/compost that I scrapped off the ground around a pine tree, very rich organic material.
I had tried using this material in a soil block, but after compressing it, it was too dense and seeds wouldn't germinate or grow well. Put into a net pot though and seeds sprouted and grew well.

Here's a cucumber seedling that was grown in a 3" peat moss soil block, then put in a 5" net pot with compost/forest mix surrounding the soil block.  I transplanted it in the ground about a week ago.

 

Here is a close up of the pot & roots, with the wood chips temporarily moved away. Notice that the root have already started to grow out into the wood chips, providing more aeration.
This plant hasn't wilted yet after one week and one hot day.

 


 About a month ago, after seeing the results of vertical hugelkultur, I prepared another bed with 3 vertical stumps in them. To test out this method further.

I first planted a cucumber seedling from a peat moss 3" soil block. It was planted in the ground on top of the wood wicking wafer. This one wilted and needed shade for a couple weeks to get established in the ground.

 

Next, the idea came for just covering half the transplant with soil.  So then I took 2 cucumber seedlings in 3" peat soil blocks, put them in net pots. One with compost around it, one with just clay dirt around it. And planted them in the soil.  I did not at this point cover the plantings with wood chips.
Here's a picture of them several days after transplanting. I watered them every day, except this day.
Neither had wilted before, but now the one on the right was wilting. It was the one with clay in the net pot.
While the soil in the ground was wet, the clay in the net pot had dried out and formed a hard crust.  I believe the main reason for the wilting was the roots could not get enough air.  Right under the crust the soil was wet.
The soil in the net pot on the left was still damp, it's plant did not wilt.

Close up of plant on left, non-wilting with forest compost in net pot.

Close up of plant on right, wilting with clay in net pot.

Next I top watered the plants and put some wood chips on top of the plant in clay.

 After about 10-15 minutes it recovered.

Later, I covered both planting holes with wood chips.  Initially, I though this would cut off to much air and might cause wilting, as had filling the hole with soil did in the first planting.  But the wood chips proved to provide enough air exchange and the plants did not wilt, and it was easier to keep them watered enough, so they didn't wilt from dry soil.  Here are the two plants today almost 3 weeks after transplanting.

Here on the left is the originally planted cuke that needed shading.  It was transplanted almost 2 weeks before the other two. (The right plant is the same as the left plant in the picture above.) 

I'm very excited to see how these 3 cucumber plants grow.  Will the two net pot ones stay wilt free, even when they get bigger??  Hopefully the stumps underneath them will help with this.  Will the net pots planted in the ground restrict the roots and stunt the plants somewhat.  I don't believe so, but want to see.
Also I want to see if the one planted first becomes completely wilt free once it roots grow bigger and reach the stump below it. It now still wilts some in heat.

Up to this time all the transplants have been first 3" peat soil blocks put into net pots.  After seeing the problems with peat drying out when transplanting I started a squash and one more cuke in 5" net pots planted with just forest floor compost.  I'll transplant them (when they are bigger) exactly as in the diagram to insure this method works. Next year I'm currently planning on doing all my own transplants this way for the entire garden, and putting stumps under everything.

5" net pot seedlings in forest floor mix, waiting to be transplanted.

Wood chip bed

After seeing how well the hugelkultur beds were doing, I decided to make another bed but with just digging in massive amounts of woodchips.

The idea is to see if you can get a good first year harvest from this and then in future years will there be enough organic matter in the soil so that it becomes a good no till bed.

I dug down about 1 to 1.5' deep, double dig style.  Then I added wood chips to the dirt pile and raked it back in. The bed rose about 1'+ after doing all this.

This picture shows the bed after being prepared.  The "density" of woodchips on the surface, is the same as the density of woodchips added to the entire 1' to 1.5' depth.

This seemed like a lot of wood chips to me at the time.  However now when I dig into the bed to take a look at the soil, it does seem like much less wood chips than I remember.  Next time I'll add a lot more.

The bed was planted in mid June with transplants and direct seeds of corn & pole beans. Here it is on July 10th. So far it looks quite well. The plants are not quite as green as they should be, but I'll be adding more liquid fertilizer shortly.  I have been able to keep squash, cukes, & tomatoes in hugelbeds dark green, so keeping this woodchip bed green shouldn't be an issue.

No compost, no leaf mulch, and no store-bought fertilizer was added.  The only additions were wood chips and HLF (homemade liquid organic fertilizer).

The first 3 years of failure

For the first 3 years my heavy clay garden has been pretty much a failure.

The 1st year I cleared away the Juniper trees, dug beds while mixing in some pine needles and just a few branches.

This "hugelkultur lite" approach didn't work well. Garden did poorly but with some harvest.


2nd year, under the inspiration of "One Straw Revolution" I just planted as is, no new digging. Big failure, no harvest except pole beans.


3rd year, I planted cover crops for the winter and hoped again to give no-till a chance. Planted vegetables directly amongst cereal rye cover crops. Another big failure. The soil was too compact and without a good mulch the soil became hard.  The drip irrigation only kept the soil wet about 3-4" away from each emitter, not enough for the plants.

4th year, success finally using hugelkultur.

Hello Gardeners,

This infrequent blog will share gardening observations and techniques that are somewhat uncommon and hopefully useful to others.

My own gardening focus follows several areas of exploration:

1.  First time success. How to grow a good vegetable garden right away without first building up the soil over years, without using compost, without using any purchased fertilizers.  The idea is that if you needed to all of a sudden start growing some of your own food, what can you do, and do it organically. Compost is obviously great for a garden and if you have it, use it. But for a first time garden, most people will not have been composting themselves and to save money, might not want to purchase compost.

2.   No wilt gardening.  My own garden only gets afternoon sun, not morning sun. This creates great challenges I've found. By the time the sun hits the plants, it is already hot and they start wilting, so they don't get a lot of good direct sunlight photosynthesis time.  Morning sun, before it gets hot and the plants start wilting is the best.
This especially retards transplants and seedling growth.  The young plants need a lot of shade, until the roots get established.  Comparing my garden to others in the area, I believe my transplants and direct seeded plants take an extra 3 weeks to get established.
So figuring out how to get young plants "wilt free" in direct afternoon sunlight has/is a key focus for me.

3.  Low maintenance, low cost gardening. I like setting up gardens, but not maintaining them.

If you've found some useful techniques along these lines, please comment and share.

Happy gardening,
GardenSeek