Hugelkultur Materials

Having no large trees in my yard to cut down for wood, I relied on Craigslist’s free listings to get all my large logs. Four car loads later I had a collection of maple, plum, douglas fir, and hawthorn wood. My neighbors contributed a lot of medium sized cherry logs and thick lilac and apple branches (thank you so much!!!). From my own yard I was able to harvest a lot of lilac and rhododendron branches of all sizes (the bushes were all in need of a good pruning anyways). What you see is the result of an entire summer and fall of collecting wood. Sara thought I was crazy to keep gathering more and more, but we ended up burying every single bit in the mounds, raised bed, and pots.

I am lucky enough to live in a city with a vibrant getchipdrop.com network, so I was able to get all my arborist wood chips for free. Definitely watch their video Why ChipDrop Probably Is NOT For You before putting in a request, but in my case it worked out great. The chips I recieved were primarily softwood evergreens with some other stuff mixed in.

I had a really great experience connecting with a horse ranch through the Pierce Conservation District Manure Share and hauling (in 10 gallon plastic totes) a bunch of horse manure back to my house for use in my hugelkultur raised bed. But for my large hugelkultur mounds and hugelkultur pots, the amount of trips that would be necessary to acquire enough horse manure made that option not so attractive. I decided the simplest and most cost effective option would be to get a load of TAGRO Mix delivered. TAGRO Mix is 50% biosolids (humanure), 25% sawdust, and 25% screened sand. According to the TAGRO website it’s comparable to steer manure. TAGRO Mix is NOT the same as the TAGRO Potting Soil (20% biosolids, 20% sawdust, 60% aged bark) that you can buy in bags at local garden centers.

The summer before I built my hugelkultur mounds I started a hot compost bin using all the fruit and vegetable kitchen waste that my worm bin couldn’t handle. Then in late summer and early fall my neighbor’s huge standard apple tree dropped a ton of apples due to drought stress and those also went in the bin. Arborist wood chips were layered in to add carbon as well as fall leaves. Considering that the TAGRO Mix is pretty much inert (they cook the hell out of it to make it safe), I was so grateful to have a lot of mostly finished compost by the next spring when building my garden. Adding it as the final hugelkultur layer infused the mounds and pots with beneficial microbes, worms, and other insects.