Not familiar with hugel beds.
I don’t like the paper bricks for burning either, that’s why the idea of using them as a retainer wall popped into my head.
As for the sand, I live across the road from the beach so I had a combination of beach sand and mahl (very fine grained sand that has set like concrete).
Drainage is not a problem, excessive drainage and water repellent sand is though.
When my father first moved into town he dug up 2 veggie plots of approximately 5m by 6m using railway sleepers for borders.
As we have a fair number of farmer friends and access to shearing sheds plus we cut jarrah sleepers into battens to build lobster pots we had huge amounts of jarrah sawdust, he piled in 20 odd wheat bags of sawdust per plot and at least the same amounts of mature sheep manure and cow pats.
He had to add hungry boards to the boarders of the patches for about a month and by then he had gone to a farm clearance sale and picked up a 4 stroke rotary hoe with a tine bar about 700mm wide which he used to dig it all in.
After a spring/summer crop of tomatoes and the usual suspects the height of the veggie beds was barely different to the outside area.
He put a shovel into it to turn over some dirt and there was barely a 20mm slither of dark soil before the white sand started.
He loaded up those beds twice a year for the next 3 years and it was always the same.
That’s why I lined the bottom of my patches to try and retain some of vegetable matter and as I also added clay I wanted to try and contain that as well.
It didn’t make much difference though
My last attempt about 5 years ago, I collected ribbon weed and wire weed off the beach and built 2 rows 1.5m wide- 7m long and up to knee height in July for an early spring planting.
I had a thick newspaper base under the 2 rows and added chook, sheep plus mushroom mulch alternatively through the layers.
By September I could barely see the rows, added about the same amount of seaweed and planted tomatoes, corn and silver beets with only 4 silver beets producing enough a couple of side dishes to a couple of meals.
Now when the kids want to do a veggie patch I just use foam boxes, plastic tubs or just drop a bag of veggie potting mix on the ground cut a couple of holes into it and stick a store bought seedling into the hole.
A bit sad, I know
