Master gardener and beloved commentor Satby, with an update:
I thought it might be fun to look at how my hugelkultur flower bed project looks in year 4, and talk about the successes and failures.
Reminder, here’s how it started in 2019; and my bed is pretty half-assed for a hugelkultur because I didn’t make a mound, just filled the flat bed left after I took the scraggly evergreens out with wood, leaves, grass clippings, and garden bed soil.
After the basic bed was in, I planted my anchor shrubs: two Vanilla Strawberry hydrangeas on each end and a tiny Rose of Sharon center.
(Also: tulips, daffodils, and hyacinth bulbs put in later.)
I followed that up with some bedding plants (dahlias, cannas, and geraniums) and filled in the holes with potted plants. It looked pretty good by that August.
The following spring 2020 looked pretty good too, but I decided not to replant the cannas and dahlias there, no full sun.
So started a series of years of planting different annual flowers with limited success, and usually resorting to pots of begonias to fill in. Too dry for impatients, too shadowy for daylillies after 2021, ditto petunias, geraniums, nasturtiums. I tried them all.
And as for why it’s so shadowy: now in year 4, I’m really pleased with the hugelkultur bed, because I’ve never had shrubs grow so quickly or successfully. All of them are taller than me at 5-6 feet, and lush! Unlike other shrubs I’ve planted in this sandy soil, the organic matter composting in the bed provided nutrients AND some badly needed water retention. Long view below, close-up at the top:
They keep most of the ground below and between them shaded, and I don’t want to grow ferns. So great success on my shrubs and spring bulbs, pretty much total failure on flowering annuals / perennials planted there.This fall, all three shrubs are getting pruned back by a third, with the goal of having them fill in more horizontally. Then I won’t need to fill any gaps. 😉
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It finally, definitively, feels like Fall around here. The Spousal Unit is very happy that his favorite season is behaving ‘as it should’, at last…
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
satby
Ah, I should have mentioned the two old growth sugar maples in the parkway in front of my house adding to the shade. Spring and fall, that side gets great sun after about noon, once everything leafs out it gets barely two hours of sun on the ground under the hydrangeas.
High today will be 64° with some rain. Same weather in Chicago where I will be at a baseball game. Fortunatly, the cousin who’s driving wants to leave early (darn 😊😊😊).
Jeffg166
Congratulations on your hugelkultur bed.
Took the tomato plants out yesterday. They were done.
Had to start foxglove seeds over. The slugs ate all the new plants.
Baud
Nice.
satby
@Jeffg166: We’ll have 80+° weather returning this week, falling into highs in the 70s the following two weeks, so I’m hoping all the green tomatoes still growing have time to begin ripening before we get our first hard frost, usually late October. I pruned back the new tomato growth to encourage what’s formed already to hurry up!
satby
@Baud: thanks.
mrmoshpotato
Hope he enjoys tomorrow’s blizzard which he brought upon himself. :)
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Mousebumples
Wow, those look great, satby! We have very clay-y soil (vs sand), and I’m thinking of planting an apple tree in spring. And, if I can find them, bareroot fruit bushes. Our raspberries are doing great, so adding blackberries and the lime seems worthwhile.
Have fun at the game! (also, got your email response, so I’ll try to respond back later today)
Princess
It looks great! Really useful to see all the steps. I love hydrangeas.
kalakal
Very nice. Good in sandy soils you say? I must try that
delphinium
Nice progress on the bed and your hydrangeas are so pretty! I have some shrub pruning in my future too, lots of growth due to all the rain this summer.
Have fun at the baseball game.
satby
@kalakal: I planted other shrubs with a couple of pails of purchased garden soil in the hole before placing the rootball in, so I never planted straight into the dirty sand that is my yard. But stuff just barely grew, and lots died after a couple of lackluster years. Since then, I’ve been side dressing with compost and activated charcoal around established plants, and planting other stuff in raised beds. Water retention is the big problem in sandy soil, it can be dry as a bone less than 36 hours after a good rain in hot weather. The organic stuff gives the roots a chance to get a drink.
satby
@rikyrah: 🙋morning!
And thanks everyone. It’s been a learning process.
OzarkHillbilly
Nice pics Satby, thanx.
My own hugelkultur beds in the veggie garden were a mixed bag. The one planted in cukes gave me everything I wanted and then some. The melon bed… Not so much. Small and not very sweet at all. Such is life.
My middle STL granddaughter started pre-school a few weeks back, so we haven’t been getting her on Mondays, just her little Sis. Yesterday, she told her mother that she wanted to spend a day with us, so in 5 mins I go into STL to pick her up for the day.
Score one For Team MawMaw and PawPaw.
Have a good day all, I know I will.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Very cool. And the “learning things” part of it makes it more interesting.
kalakal
@satby: I’m in Florida, the ‘soil’ here is dirty sand. I’ve been doing what you did, some plants love it, most don’t, and when we get long dry spells I’m having to water like crazy. I’ve been adding organic material but on an ad hoc rather than systematic basis and its helped but what you’ve done here looks so much better. I have an opportunity as at the moment all the fencing is being replaced ( I have loads of plants in ‘shelter pots’ to stop them getting stomped) so I’m clearing out a lot of the crap ( I’ve been neglectful for the last few years due to health reasons, but those are fixed). There are a few places where I can try this before replanting so rrather than just replant I’ll have a try at this. Thank you very much for the post, I didn’t know about hugelkultur
Gvg
I have just heard about biochar and long term improvement to tropical sandy soils….it sounds do able for my Florida soil.
improving the soil always helps. And it should never end. People throw away leaves. They are nuts.
Ken
@Gvg: The use of charcoal to improve tropical soils has a very long history. The “Location” section of that article is impressive.
eclare
Thank you so much for this post Satby, it’s interesting to see all the steps. I hope your foundation has a good day today, and it helps your family heal.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Sweet!
WereBear
What a fine outcome with the shrubs! I always think forest plants in shade. They live there.
When we moved into our tract house on Long Island, it was dealing with how this latecomer was done on the cheap, where they simply spread the foundation sand and left. We put in several years just letting the weeds grow tall and get chopped down for anything else to grow.
Shade is tough, but I had good luck with some wilder violet strains and possibly alyssum with spring sun.
SkyBluePink
Very interesting method. I have lots of downed tree limbs that I layer in thickets for little creatures. May try a hugelkultur bed.
Lovely photos.
MomSense
So cool!
PAM Dirac
Very interesting example of building up a bed. I’m not sure I’ll get a chance to test it in our yard. We seem to be thinking more of downsizing. We put in a lot of beds when we moved here almost 17 years ago, but more and more it feels like too much work, especially in hot, dry summers like the one we just had. It’s a lot of hose hauling to get everything watered.
On the other hand the vineyard has never been better. The vines thrive on summers like this. When the lawns get crunchy, the grapes are peaking. I’m a little over half way through this years harvest (~375 lbs so far) and I’m getting high yields of high quality fruit. In news of past vintages got some good results from the 2021 vintage at the wine competition at the Great Frederick Fair. The Backyard White got 2nd place in dry white and the Viognier got 1st place in Grapes Grown in Frederick County and Double Gold (2nd best in show). And for something like the fifth consecutive time, the dry red entry did not place. The first year I entered wines I got first place in both dry white and dry red. Seemed easy. Haven’t even placed in dry red since.
Rachel Bakes
Really useful post, thanks. We have 2 ditches that keep forming at the end of our property that we’ve filled in with decaying logs, dead leaves, and some almost finished compost. I keep planning to formally plant something in it but then forget. Will probably (eventually) toss bunches of native wildflower seeds on it to make a pollinator garden. Maybe another season of leaves and compost before I do that.
Kay
Big success! Interesting post.
I do a lot of this already in existing beds- I use cardboard covered with the yard debris mulch one can get from the city or county to cover to keep down weeds, I compost, I keep worms (who will also digest cardboard and leave you with black, beautiful compost) but I still stubbornly stick with double digging new beds. I can’t quite go no- till.
kalakal
@WereBear: Cranesbills ( true geraniums) do well in shade as do bluebells, can’t grow them here in Fl but I do really miss them. There also quite a few Euphorbias that love woodland* amygdaloides is one.
*Euphorbia has to be the world’s most adaptable plant, I’ve varieties that look like cacti thriving in deserts to bushy ones in the north of Scotland.
MazeDancer
So pretty, satby. Well done!
kalakal
@kalakal: Should be “I’ve seen varities”
Jackie in NC
@Kay: I’ve had great success with no till, we live on a mountain and the ground is rocks and clay with about a half inch of topsoil. Impossible to dig for me. A layer of cardboard, 12 inches of leaves and compost left overwinter and amazing soil to plant in the spring. I didn’t believe it would work either. I figured I’d end up with 2 inches of topsoil but still be unable to dig past it but I’ve found I can dig a big enough hole to plant perennials. It does something magical to the soil underneath the cardboard. We find earthworms that we otherwise don’t see in native ground. I refuse to call it soil. They must be the magicians.
Yarrow
@satby:
I was told not to do this when planting trees. It may apply to shrubs as well. I was told that if the soil you put in the hole is substantially different from the surrounding soil, as roots grow they will hit the main soil and treat it like the side of a pot and not grow into it as effectively. For soil amendments when planting trees, add compost and mulch to the top. It will work its way down.
Love seeing the hugelkultur bed. They are so cool. It’s a great way to improve soil and provide nutrients for plants. And also not waste any valuable garden waste.
oldgold
Satby: Nice flowers, but your lawn – oh my! Grass is so retro and boomerish. I invite to join the avant-garde glechoma hederacea ( “Proliferating Charles” ) lawn movement. Some of its many attributes: no mowing, no chemicals, early flowers and medicinal. As a Taoist would advise, let your lawn be what it has always wanted to be!
StringOnAStick
Here in the high desert, the week of hot and dry has rekindled the fire West of us, so smoke is a problem again. Hopefully the cooler weather coming next week will tamp it down again.
I’m headed to the open house at a native nursery this morning, one of the very few days each year that they allow non wholesale/professional customers.
We were out of town for a week and while we were gone the CA quail took over the backyard. The dense pollinator garden I planted two years ago is perfect cover for them, just like I had hoped.
stinger
Great photo essay, satby! Love the hydrangea. I have an area between two sycamores — relatively late to leaf out but then pretty dense shade — where Virginia bluebells, violets, trillium, hosta, bleeding heart, Solomon’s seal, and astilbe are thriving. That gives me mostly spring color, and I keep thinking If I want to deal with annuals, to put out some coleus for summer and fall color.
Miss Bianca
started making some hugel piles up here at the Mountain Hacienda a few years ago, but didn’t persist so they’re now mostly falling-apart piles of timber, but GO YOU, Satby – just shows what the technique can accomplish in the hands of an actual gardener!
Miss Bianca
@PAM Dirac: Congratulations!
satby
@eclare: Thanks! in Chicago now, waiting to meet the cousin who’s driving. And it’s pouring. Hope it stops soon.
satby
@oldgold: 😆😆😆 I’ve been planting daylillies and shrubs around the border along the fence and slowly reducing the grassy area. It’s 1/2 of what it was when I moved in.
satby
@Jackie in NC: doing no-till in the back now that my nightmare beds are fully cleaned out. I’m doubling the cardboard and mulch because I need to eradicate some invasive plants, then next spring I hope to just transplant the four roses that seem very sick of living in pots. They’re own-root roses, so once free they’ll grow pretty wide.
satby
@Yarrow: I mixed the new soil with the old pretty completely. My failure was not grasping how fast it all dries after a rain. I think I stressed some plants to death 😕 It’s a big change from the clay soil of IL and MI away from the lake.
JAM
@Kay: I’m the same way, but it’s partly because I never seem to plan ahead in time to kill the grass;). I always have to double-dig to get rid of the bermuda grass roots, and then I often put cardboard down in addition to that. I don’t till every year, just to get rid of the grass the first time. Even that doesn’t get rid of the grass problem, it just gives me and the perennials a head start against it.
JAM
@oldgold: I wish I could do that, but my lawn weed problem is dallis grass, which is a huge perennial grass that coexists happily with my also persistently healthy bermuda. ugh. I hate being forced to be a lawn person but I will have to spray it after the bermuda goes dormant this fall. I hope to suppress it with corn gluten meal afterwards. I figure spraying once is better for the environment than all the extra mowing, especially since my husband has the mower tuned like a race car.
Yarrow
@satby: Yeah, if you’re used to clay soil sandy soil is a whole different thing. Just doesn’t hold water.
sab
@oldgold: That’s our policy on lawns, if it’s flat and green it’s welcome. If it’s not flat then the mower will keep it flatter.
kalakal
@Yarrow: My grandad had it pat
“Clay soil breaks your back
Sand breaks your heart”