Is it bad to put logs in the bottom of a raised bed?



Are logs bad for raised beds? Recently there’s been talk of how this popular method for filling tall raised beds might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

But why? Well, there is a phenomenon called nitrogen immobilization. The simple explanation of why this happens is because adding a ton of wood or wood chips into a soil mixture will result in a fungally dominant soil food web, which will pull nitrogen from the soil immediately surrounding the wood to help break the wood down, thus robbing it from your plants.

While this is TRUE, there are a few considerations:

1. Most gardeners bury logs deep enough in their beds that the root systems of plants grown above in the soil mix rarely make it to the log layer

2. The nitrogen is only pulled from the soil directly surrounding the wood

3. The scale of nitrogen immobilization relative to causing a true plant deficiency is minimal

in the end, we still highly recommend this method, as it saves 50 to 60% or more on soil cost, and is a great way to repurpose organic material.

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49 thoughts on “Is it bad to put logs in the bottom of a raised bed?”

  1. A good thing to put below is burnt logs, not like pure charcoal but enough that it’s easy for microbes and the plants to turn into useful nutrients. Careful on ash though it could turn the soul acidic.

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  2. This is how I do all my raised beds, 6-8 inch of logs. 4 inches or so of dried leaves. 8-12 inches of regular screened loam, then 8-12 inches of high quality soil. Been working like a charm

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  3. Where is this place? Mist be Florida with all the citrus trees and stuff like dragonfruit??
    Must be so much fun to have a big garden and grow stuff in a climate like that. Where i live we have 2 monts of summer and in late september we can already have occasianal snowfall. So growing stuff like tomatoes or chilis can give you a very hard time if you have no greenhouse. It's possible but sometimes the cold weather just let them grow properly 😢

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  4. I did several hugelkulter in my yard about five years ago to get rid of old, decaying pruned branches in my yard. To compensate I added coffee grounds to add NITROGEN to the soil. It worked great.

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  5. I've some Qustion about raised bed..
    1) Do I need add any kinds of compost or something In raised bed in one year to 2 years??

    2)How long time I can used raised bed for vegetable garden after harvesting?? Can I reused it??

    3) Is there any kinds of maintainence after making raised bed??

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  6. When you say you're going to put it in the comments, you put them there. Someone else had to put where they were (in the description; hit the 3 dots in upper right of the short to get there).

    YouTube algorithm wanted to pimp you out, and you lied to us. Your plants deserve a better plant daddy.

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  7. It's actually not a problem at all and might assist in providing nitrogen to your plants, especially as beneficial fungi and bacteria find their way into the logs and soak nitrogen up from the decaying wood and return it to the topsoil.

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