Join the Debate: Are Logs in Raised Garden Beds a Mistake?

I think that putting logs at the bottom of your raised beds is a terrible idea. This was how I set the Internet on fire about a year ago when I gave my unsolicited opinion about putting logs at the bottom of your raised beds. Hi, I'm Nicole Johnsey Burke. I've been building, installing, designing raised bed kitchen gardens now for almost a decade. I've created over 500 kitchen gardens for my clients and then taught thousands of students how to do it through my book and through my online courses. And I do not think that you should put logs at the bottom of your raised beds. Today I'm going to tell you why that is and some alternatives if you're wanting to fill your beds with something other than great soil. So first off, didn't mean to offend anyone, but I saw this trend happening all over the Internet where people were filling their raised beds with all sorts of crazy wild things in order to save money on their soil. And I'm all about saving money on soil using less pre prepared soil. But I personally think that putting big chunks and hunks of wood at the bottom of your raised beds is a recipe for failure. Not just from my own mental ideas, but from my experience. So let me tell you why I think it's a bad idea and what I would do instead of so first off, I've talked about this in other episodes. If you want to watch my video all about putting mulch in a vegetable garden, you can check out that video right here. So mulch is similar with wood and logs, right? It's just smaller pieces of wood. But I talked about this idea in the mulch video that in my gardens I only want one main process happening. I only want one thing to be in the midst of a major change in terms of its form. And what I don't want to happen is something in my soil breaking down heavily, decomposing in a quick rate at the same time that my plants are trying to grow and get bigger. Because what happens in that situation is you've got two things pooling simultaneously from the soil medium that you're that both things are trying to live and grow and do their thing in, right? So that's why I don't like using mulch in a raised bed because mulch is decomposing and it's pulling nitrogen from the surrounding area as it decomposes at the same time that your plants are trying to grow and get bigger and they're pulling nitrogen from the soil. So I really don't want any competition for my plants Right. My plants are the star. And so in a raised bed, if you fill it up with logs with big pieces of wood, the same thing's happening to them that's happening to the mulch. They are going to immediately. They already are on the way to turning into dirt. Right. They're on their way to becoming soil. And so if you've got these logs that are in the process of decomposing, they're going to be pulling nitrogen from the surrounding soil. And when that happens, it could be fine, but it could be terrible. The thing is, we don't know how long this process is going to take, and we also don't know how it's going to affect the surrounding soil. So these logs could degrade very slowly and have just a slow, continuous pull on the nitrogen from the surrounding soil area. If that's the case, we don't know if we need to amend the soil every day, if we're going to have to be amending the soil weekly, monthly, if we're going to be amending the soil for years to come, because we're going to consistently have that tug and pull on the nitrogen source inside of our soil. So it's unpredictable. We don't know the length of this degradation, this decomposition, we don't know how long that's going to take. And we also do not know the amount of which it's going to impact the soil where our plants are also growing. So, number one, it's just an unpredictable process. So we don't know the length of time or the amount. We do know for sure it will impact the nitrogen in the soil. All right, so some people will say, oh, I used logs and I had a great experience. And then you'll hear other people say, I used logs and it was a terrible experience. And it's because of that unpredictability that I just stay away from it. To me, it's not worth it. The raised beds are too expensive, the soil is too expensive, and my plants and seeds are too expensive. And I can't get this season back. So I don't want to leave it to chance. I don't want to leave it to unpredictability whether these logs are going to work out or not, whether these logs are going to impact the soil where my plants are growing or not. So for that reason, for the unpredictable nature of it, I don't know the length of time it'll take for them to break down, and I don't know the full impact of the nitrogen that they'll pull from the surrounding soil to do that breakdown. So the unpredictability of it. I love the unpredictability of my plants. I love trying to figure out how fast they're going to grow, what they're going to grow into. That's fun. What is not fun to me is the unpredictability of the things that will impact my plants. So I try to get rid of all those other factors so I can just focus in on my plants. The second reason that I stay away from logs in my soil is that it destabilizes my soil. I really want my soil to be finished, to be done creating itself, to be done decomposing, so that it's now stable, static, and that it can simply sit there and provide this incredible growing medium for my plants that they can rely on day after day after day. So when things are breaking down way under the surface of my soil, when this log is slowly turning into dirt, day after day, all that creates a lot of tumultuous activity. All that is starting to make the soil shift. The soil is going to be slowly going down, but it's also going to be changing its nutrients, it's going to be changing its composition. And that destabilization is not a great place for something to grow in. Right. I'm a mom of four, so I like to compare it to my kids trying to grow, you know, and become from little to big in my home. That we all know, right? What makes a great place for a kid to grow and to mature when all their life is kind of up and down and they're going through puberty and their bodies are changing, their minds are changing, their emotions are changing, what helps them navigate all that change As a teenager and a child and a young adult, a very stable place, right. They don't need, while they're going through all this change for me to be going changing too. They don't need for things to be unpredictable where they live or when they wake up or when they come to have lunch. They need those things to be very consistent. They always know there'll be food on the table, Always know their mom will be there for them in the morning. When they have those things in place, that consistency, then they can go through the ups and downs, all the changes, all the things that are going to kind of pull them in one direction or another. They can go through those with more confidence because they know when they come back home, things are the same. The same is true for the garden. Sorry for my mom metaphor. We're going to have a little segue each time called the mom metaphor. That's my mom metaphor for the garden. And I think the plants are the same way. So as these plants are going through all the changes, they're weathering the ups and downs of the rainy days and the drought days and the sunny days and the cold days, and they're trying to become all that they were meant to become. They're trying to go from seed to seed all the way through the leaves, the stems, the flowers, the fruit. They need to have this steady place to grow in, something that doesn't change where the nutrients are always available. They can always count on the permeability of the soil and the composition of the soil. And so if I've got these logs breaking down consistently day after day in this garden, it really is not creating that really permanent space for these plants to rely on. In fact, it's destabilizing it for these plants. The last reason is because you're still going to need soil. So I like to say if we stuff our beds in the bottom with lots of things to try to, you know, use less soil when we first install the garden, or all that we're actually doing is delaying that purchase. Okay, so hear me out. The first day that. And I've tested this, I tested it with logs and all kinds of things. The first day when you do your install and you fill up your bed with all these other natural things, leaves and sticks and things like that, then it's going to feel good that day, because you only use a few bags of soil. You only use a little bit of extra soil right at the top. But all those natural elements, they're going to start decomposing the day you put them in there, right? They're going to start breaking down the moment that they go into that bed. And so within a week, within a month, you're going to come back and you're going to have this much space where the soil's already dropped. You come back, you know, six months later, and the soil is going to be dropping by 6 inches or a foot. And so now you're in a situation, right, where you can't add any more of those rough materials because this is your planting area now. Your plants and your seeds have sunk down 6 to 12 inches in the bed. And now you have to ask yourself the question, you know, what do I do? Do I take the plants out, start over? Do I wait till next season? Let's say you wait a whole year. You come back, what are you going to add to the top of that Bed some more soil. So all the soil that you saved, you know, in the year prior, you're going to have to add it back just a year later. And I found, you know, after installing hundreds of gardens, if I just fill it up with soil in the first place, I call this inside of our program Kitchen Garden Academy. I call it worst first. Just put it all in soil first. It really goes down very minimally. Like, the most we have to add is an inch or 2 instead of 6 to 12 inches. And I've tested this. I've filled beds with all kinds of other materials. And when I come back, it's just not worth it because I end up using all that soil. It's just, I delay the purchase. I delay it six months or a year from now. Plus, I've put my plants through all that destabilizing situation. I've put my plants through the nitrogen coming out of the soil. And me never knowing what the composition of the soil is going to look like, never knowing the unpredictability, right. Of how long it's going to take for those logs to break down and how they're going to impact the soil long term. So I find it's just not worth it. It's totally made the whole process of growing a little bit more unpredictable and, and made it unstable for the plants. Plus, I have to end up buying the soil anyway. So those are the three reasons why I do not recommend using logs at the bottom of your bed. But, Nicole, I just don't want to fill it up with soil. I hear you saying. All right, so I'll tell you a couple of alternatives with the caveat that you are still going to have to fill up your beds with soil. But these are the options I would use instead of logs to get a little bit more predictability and hopefully to get the decomposition done faster. So the faster you can get the decomposition finished, then the easier it's going to be to stabilize your soil and just grow from there on. So you could fill your bed up with leaves or with straw. These two options are going to be less pulling on the nitrogen from the soil in your garden. And you can compact these easier. So I'm talking really compacting them. I have a video I did at the beginning of last year where I just poured leaf bag after leaf bag after leaf bag into my raised beds, stomped on them, watered them down. I got them where they were super compact. Then you could put straw on top of that. Same rule applies very compact, very, very compact. And then water them in and then Put soil on top, you're still going to have degradation. You're still going to have to come back and add more soil or compost in a couple of seasons. But without using the logs, you're not going to have as much unpredictability and you will not lose as much of your nitrogen. The other option you can do is build a false bottom. So you, if you've got a two foot tall bed, or if you've got even a, you know, 18 inch bed and you only want to use this much soil, then take some kind of material, your bed material, and build a bottom for it that's higher up so that you're not having to fill the entire bed with soil. If you're not thinking that your plant roots are going to need to go deep into your bed, you can build a false bottom there with some wood or with any kind of building material. Build your false bottom and then fill the bed with soil just to that level and let the bottom of the bed be open. This is a great option if you're wanting to have a garden that's really tall so that it's easy to tend to, but you don't think you're going to be growing plants that have roots that are going to reach down that deep into your garden. Now listen, Hugelkultur is a thing. And I can't end this video without addressing this. Hugelkultur, I think that's the way you address it, the way you say it is a total, is an absolutely worthwhile, worthy thing. But hugelkultur happens outside of a raised bed. Hugelkultur is where you take a log and you place it. That's the base of your garden and, and then you lay natural materials on top of that log and that slowly degrades and you plant on top of that. When you do that, when you set up a hugelkultur system, it's like a row garden, but it's almost like a mound. It's mounds and mounds and mounds of natural material that you grow on. When you have that happening, it's inside of an open space. It's not enclosed inside of a raised bed. It's not enclosed of something that you're wanting to preserve, that you're not wanting to degrade, right? And it's open to all the elements. It's touching the earth, it's open to the sky. It's a natural thing that can work and do its own thing in its own time. And you're going to be able to adjust it as it goes plus, it's not a raised bed system where it's all in one and you're piling on lots and lots of soil on top of it. You're letting that whole natural process happen right there on top of the log. You're not adding inches and inches of soil on top. Hugelkultur is something also that happens over a long period of time. It's a long haul to do hugelkultur, and with raised beds, we're looking for a much more immediate payback. We're looking for something happening in that same season. So I don't at all think that hugelkultur is not a thing or not a worthwhile thing. But my thing is raised beds. My thing is growing in small spaces in a quick amount of time very efficiently and effectively. And I've just found over the years that that does not work. If you put logs inside your raised beds instead, if you've got to do it, fill it up with lots of leaves, lots of straw, pack it down as tight as possible, use as much good soil as you can possibly afford, and know that if you use natural products that aren't soil at the bottom of your bed this year, you're just going to have to pay for more soil next year. Eventually that's going to degrade and it's going to be time to top your beds off. In general, remember this rule. We only want one organic process happening at a time. In general, we want our soil to be stable. We want our soil to already have decomposed already, be at the perfect state to grow our plants. We want it to just be there, full of nutrients, very permeable, and ready to grow our plants. We want the main thing that's growing, that's changing, that's evolving to be our plants. We want to create this nice, stable structure so that our plants can go through the storms, they can weather all that's ahead of them. They can push and grow and pull nutrients and rely on the soil of our garden because it is consistent, so that they can grow and explode and do their magical thing because the soil beneath them is perfect as perfect can be. And for that reason, I don't use logs. Tell me what you think about my opinion. If you've had an experience that proves this to be true or proves me wrong, you gotta tell me about it in the comments below. I'd love to learn from you. If you want to learn how to set up your garden the way I do, you can do that with my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. And if you want to learn all about the plants, you got to check out my book Leaves, Roots and Fruit. And to know when to plant all these things, you got to check out the Gardenary calendar. It's@gardenary.com calendar. You give me two days, I give you all the rest. You can get it for free right below this video or@gardenary.com calendar all right, tell me what you think about my ideas. I'm ready for you to tell me my idea is terrible. I've just tested it and found that it's really not worth the question. It's really not worth the wondering if the logs are going to work. The little bit of money you're going to save by putting those logs at the bottom of your bed isn't worth all of the issues that could come from it. Trust me on this one. Or tell me if you can prove me wrong. I'd love to hear it. Subscribe to the Gardenary channel, come back and I'll be here waiting, watching, and I'll have some new ideas and opinions for you next time. See you soon. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening anywhere. You love getting your podcast delivered on on Apple podcasts, on Spotify, iHeartRadio, you name it, we are there for you. And if you want to read the notes and get our free resources to help you grow more, you can go to gardenary.com podcast.