Hügelkultur is fascinating. Early this year, my kid and I built an 8'x4'x2' Hügelkultur raised bed for vegetables. We're fortunate to have some fallen trees an

Hügelkultur is fascinating. Early this year, my kid and I built an 8'x4'x2' Hügelkultur raised bed for vegetables. We're fortunate to have some fallen trees and rotting logs in the back of the yard, and we were able to fill the first foot of the bed with this debris, then regular soil and compost. The plants are thriving and producing plenty of edibles, and now I'm thinking about building a second one. The most interesting discovery is that the bed seems not to require much moisture. I was watering it every day for a while, until it seemed that it was turning into a big mud pit, so I stopped, and the plants have continued to thrive. I also built a drip irrigation system into the bed, very easy to do actually, but have not turned it on for the same reason. The ecosystem seems to retain water and is not draining moisture into the ground nearly as much as I first anticipated. If you build a raised bed, it's a good idea to put in 1/4" (1 cm) metal mesh at the bottom and up the sides a bit, to discourage burrowing creatures. Then add a layer of cardboard (old pizza boxes or shipping boxes work fine), followed by your Hügelkultur logs and branches, and finally some decent organic raised bed soil and quality compost. Another lesson: this system is heavy. Make sure you use strong wood and solid construction techniques. To do it again, I would add more reinforcing beams, because a couple of the side panels are starting to bulge a bit. I will be patching them with struts later this year, probably. Another interesting discovery: Hügelkultur is conducive to slime molds. I noticed this weird, alien life form appearing overnight and had to ask in a gardening forum: yellowish domes of soft, fungus-like stuff. It turns out to be Fuligo septica, commonly known as dog vomit slime mold (any players of Hack out there?). It's harmless and even beneficial, but looks horrible. I've started using Hügelkultur in my patio buckets and ceramic pots as well; half the pot gets the rotting sticks, then top it off with dirt. Thus far, these pots are doing very well. In this era of uncertainty, growing your own food is a great idea, and it's good to see such brilliant ideas as Hügelkultur and square-foot gardening being widely disseminated. Probably next year we're getting chickens. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuligo_septica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuligo_septica