- 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. - 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.
