Update #1 – 5/7/25: My Blueberry plant has died
As you’ll read below, I focused a lot of my efforts for the hugelkultur mound on gather and piling up rotten wood. While this is great for the long term, I did not cover the wood with a thick enough layer of soil to allow for immediate growth of plants. The jostaberries are seemingly doing okay, but many of the strawberry crowns and the blueberry bush have died atop the mound garden.
I’ve had a pile of rotting logs (at least a cord) on my property for over a decade and they were put there by the previous owner of my house, so they are pretty darn old. They seemed unfit for burning because they were rotten and wet, so I’ve kind of just let them be, except for adding some used up oyster mushroom mycelium cakes on occasion. I have seen any mushrooms pop up, but I’m sure there’s a bunch of different fungi putting in work. This inspired me to create a Simple Hügelkultur Mound Garden in my backyard, making use of these logs.
I thought these logs were basically useless and infested with termites and snakes (copperheads live around here and I’ve seen several in my neighborhood over the years). I recently found out about hügelkultur from some posts on Bluesky, and thought about building a raised bed to throw rotten wood in the bottom. But as I started research hügelkultur, I found that there’s may different types, and building a raised bed wasn’t necessary for the mound type of hügelkultur – hügelkultur literally translates to “hill garden” or “mound garden”.
So, since I already had this huge pile of rotting wood, all I did was stack up the stray pieces that had fallen off the pile, then I raked the leaves and sticks that were all around the pile onto the top, and then added some soil on top to plant 8 strawberry crowns, a ka-bluey blueberry plant, and a jostaberry plant.
Then I watered everything super thoroughly to complete my Simple Hügelkultur Mound Garden.
It’s Fun To Try New Gardening Techniques
And you know what? It was legit fun. I like stacking wood, it was cold enough outside that the bugs and snakes were dormant, and most importantly, I felt like I was putting this pile of rotting wood to good use. Not only that, but the pile of wood is between two oak trees, so it will be very easy for me to attach a couple of hooks to the tree trunks to hang a net to protect the berries in my Simple Hügelkultur Mound Garden. And now I want to collect all the stray rotting wood around my property and my neighborhood to build more mound gardens.
I only just planted everything, but I’m excited to see how it goes, and I think the strawberries will provide great groundcover for the mound garden, and the ka-bluey blueberries and jostaberry plant should have ample nutrients. What other berries should I plant on my hügelkultur gardens as part of my growing Simple Hügelkultur Mound Garden?
