>>1042413Swear I rotated that.
Here's a picture showing another mistake. The topsoil in the area I chose for the bed was incredibly depleted. It had been used to grow roses for 20 years by the previous owners, and was pretty well just mineral soil. Still, I thought that mixing it in with sugar cane mulch, home grown compost and mushroom compost would impart enough biological activity to revitalize it some.
Nope. Been in there six months and is still hydrophobic enough that you could sleep under it in a monsoon.
The sugar cane mulch was another mistake, though it could be used effectively. Because the hydrophobic soil shelters the sugar cane mulch so well, it has only decomposed in patches where it didn't have the local soil on it. As a result, the hugelkultur became the most incredible ant colony.
The tree I used for the bulk of the wood was an ancient gnarled mirror tree. Old sick mirror trees decompose incredibly quickly due to the way their immune system works. So, a week after completing the hugelkultur it had been invaded by a seething mass of ants. A week after that, there were absolutely no ants in it because the internal temperature was 70 degrees celsius. A few days after that, the temperature had driven most of the moisture out of the pile, and the ants moved back in. I put the hose on and soaked it in 3 places for 12 hours, and the next morning there were spouts of fog billowing out of holes all over it.
So the ants all diet again.
It went on like that for a while until I neglected it for a couple of months, and then a nuptial flight took place. The sky was thick with ants for days.
