How to properly fill a hugelkulture raised garden bed and in situ worms - ft Brenton Thwaites

A lot of this video I angled the camera to show the bed, and didn't realize my face wasn't in the shot, so I thought I'd be silly and get Brenton Thwaites to explain some stuff to you. (Full story, when I was at my sisters she asked me if I knew who Brenton Thwaites was, and like a true shut-in I said no, then she showed me some pictures she lined up side/by side (the thumbnail)). I don't see it THAT MUCH, but there's definitely the odd picture where we look like clones. In fact, my mom looked at this one on the thumbnail and said to my sister "okay now show me the actor's photo". LOL

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Just a side discussion I want to have on galvanized steel. Galvainization is done using Zinc, and the Zinc is used as a sacrificial plating, so that it gets eaten instead of the steel. Unfortunately, it can also have some other nasties in it like lead and cadmium in the molten zinc dip process.

We had a few people bring this up, and I think it's worth having an expanded discussion on - thank you kindly for the concern!

Using old galvanized steel like this should be done with caution, but it can be done. The leeching rate of the toxins only happens when the coating is exposed to both extreme moisture and also acidic conditions, which are unlikely to be present in your raised bed. However, to be extra safe, we can take some precautions.

For us, we made sure to orient the tin coating on the outside of the bed, so that there is never any soil contact. We will also monitor our soil and test for these things (but I do not expect to find them). We also made sure that the interior of the beds were in good condition (i.e. the metal wasn't rusting through, getting access to the coating on the outside from the inside - soil). On one panel there was a little backside rust, and we made sure to orient that on the bottom of the bed, and surround it with gravel to give better drainage there. I'm honestly not too worried about it.

However, it's important that we know that's something that we should be considering in our designs. For example, as much as I am okay with using the metal in this way, I wouldn't be okay with orienting the paint on the inside of the bed, in direct soil contact. That would likely still be okay, as long as the soil pH isn't overly acidic, but it's still just another barrier I'd like to have, so we might as well be extra safe. If I had no choice but to do that, then I would line the bed with greenhouse poly (making sure there is drainage at the bottom of course), however I wouldn't really want to rely on that never getting damaged, so I would probably just avoid it.

If someone feels that's even not a risk they'd like to take, then I would recommend avoiding using any galvanized coated metal at all, but as I said, almost all resources that I found which were well cited and referenced with research/science, it was stated that it was something to be aware of, but not to be overly concerned with. Just don't add aluminum sulphate to make the soil acidic and then grow blueberries in that bed.

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