I'm baaaack!

It's been years since I've posted hear, sort of drifted away over time.  We recently move to the Ozarks, small town of Galena, Mo and if your familiar with the Ozarks you know what the soil is like, mostly rock with a little poor red soil here and there.  So using what scrap lumber I had I built two boxes, one 22 X 48 " and one 22 X 40, both 20 inches deep.  Size was solely determined by size of the scrap wood.  Boxes are up  against a chain link fence and they face west  so part of the challenge is utilizing the norths squares with tall stuff and short stuff to south end.

I found that Nixa Hardware in Nixa, Mo had multiple types of compost as well as vermiculite and peat moss.  Not cheap but noting is in these Corvid days.

Next step is to drag rotted and semi rotted limbs/logs up the hill to fill the lower half of the beds then mix the materials to fill the beds.

Needless to say I'm anxious for the week of April 1st to start my garden!

Welcome home....

back Missed Em.  That set up with the rotted and semi-rotted logs is a great idea to fill the bottom of the beds.  Saves  a lot of money and must be pretty quick.  Each year you will have to top of the beds as the logs rot down. But a lovely way to attract deep-rooted plants and will not dry out too quickly.

Keep us posted.

Actually, filling the bottom portion of a raised bed with wood materials isn't a good idea.  First, that decaying wood will rob your plants of nitrogen.  Secondly, it would be better to use top soil or sand for those bottom few inches.  And thirdly, it will eventually break down, necessitating adding more compost to level off your beds.

I have 3 beds that were built with the Hugelkultur method of placing large pieces of wood in the bottom of the bed, covering with straw, and then adding the soil mixture on the top 8".  They are all doing exceptionally well, much better than the older beds that were built by filling the bottom of the beds with "topsoil" which had a high clay content. The ones with wood filling the bottom retain moisture more evenly, but allow excess water to drain through. The beds with the topsoil filling in the bottom tend to stay too wet for too long. But, for either method, the important part is the soil mixture for the top 6" to 8".

Thanks for the responses.

Missed-em, Welcome back!