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[Yuki]

http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

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It's a german word and some people can say it all german-ish. I'm an american doofus, so I say "hoogle culture". I had to spend some time with google to find the right spelling. Hugal, hoogal, huegal, hugel .... And I really like saying it out loud: "hugelkultur, hoogle culture, hoogal kulture ...." - it could be a chant or something.

I learned this high-falootin word at my permaculture training. I also saw it demonstrated on the Sepp Holzer terraces and raised beds video - he didn't call it hugelkultur, but he was doing it.

Hugelkultur is nothing more than making raised garden beds filled with rotten wood. This makes for raised garden beds loaded with organic material, nutrients, air pockets for the roots of what you plant, etc. As the years pass, the deep soil of your raised garden bed becomes incredibly rich and loaded with soil life. As the wood shrinks, it makes more tiny air pockets - so your hugelkultur becomes sort of self tilling. The first few years, the composting process will slightly warm your soil giving you a slightly longer growing season. The woody matter helps to keep nutrient excess from passing into the ground water - and then refeeding that to your garden plants later. Plus, by holding SO much water, hugelkultur could be part of a system for growing garden crops in the desert with no irrigation.

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Container version:
http://lowcostvegetablegarden.blogspot.com/2012/07/vertical-hugelkultur-eliminates-wilt.html

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I plant about 6 container tubs every year with eggplants and peppers.  Every year I try some different potting mix or technique to see what will work best.  This year after preparing the garden beds in the ground with hugelkultur, I thought why not, lets try it in the containers too.

In 2 containers, I layered up branches horizontally. But in 1 container, on a total lark, I just put in a big stump.

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[Yuki]

I've actually done this stuff before.

When I was living in Ohio, I added rotted spongy wood from the wooded area near my house to my garden for the fungus roots it contained; which vastly improved my soil.

The first year I was living in North Carolina (a year or two before I found this website), I didn't have money to buy garden soil, and the garden was in a low spot that was always flooded when it rained, so I piled up a bed of branches a few inches deep and covered it with compost and sand from the yard... It grew tomatoes rather splendidly.

Another time I planted stuff in a hollow log... It would have probably been cool, but squirrels dug up the plants and buried their nuts in there.

[MamaLiberty]

Sounds interesting. Probably not going to work here... no wood.   But I've done the same thing with old straw, hay and coarse compost. It takes a lot longer for these things to decompose in my dry climate, however. Some things just don't decompose at all unless they can be chopped up fine. I am still finding intact eggshell halves in a bed that had raw kitchen garbage added to it five years ago. They just sit there and sneer at me. LOL