...try it. Write back. Lemme know how it goes. Something to keep in mind about Hugelkultur is it's championed by Sepp Holzer, who is not a member of the science-based community. His largest claim to fame is turning a 100-acre conventional farm into a 100-acre permaculture farm, thereby slashing its yields by about 80%. Something else to keep in mind is that Paul Wheaton is... a flake. He has a youtube video in which he threshes grain in a Home Depot bucket with a cordless drill and some zinc-plated Chinese Home Depot chain... and a podcast in which he castigates some poor cottage-industry canning company husband-and-wife team because the plastic lids of their jars might (might) contain "chemicals" since they're only "food grade" and the couple didn't investigate further than that. He also champions rocket-mass heaters as the way to provide cheap warmth but when he needed to heat his apartment he set a 100W bulb over his head and bought a heated mousepad. I'd say do one raised bed, then do another raised bed with a log under it and lemme know how it works. This stuff is dear to my heart and quite important but there's an awful lot of woo and not a lot of science to some of it.