To Raise or Not to Raise:
That is the question
Recently one of my gardening/blogging friends asked me “is there anything about gardening in
raised beds that sucks relative to growing in rows in much larger plots?” My first response was “Potatoes”. But it’s a valid question and one I’ve given
thought to over the years. If I had a
Do-Over, what would I do differently? Today is New Years and with that (and this stack of mail order seed catalogs) the 2015 garden planning begins.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s Newton’s Third Law of Physics. There is no such thing as a completely
positive experience. There is always
downside. Always. I love gardening in raised beds. I hate trying to put potatoes in them. There.
That’s my equal and opposite reaction.
Not that it’s a deal breaker. It
just has its limitations. Honestly, the
best way to grow potatoes is in pots. Or a stack of old tires. But even that has drawbacks. So
first, let’s revisit the positives of gardening in raised beds.
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A tidy bed edged with 4"x 4" ties with gravel paths will cut down on
work and expense and be aesthetically pleasing |
First and foremost, raised beds offer a longer growing
season. In the spring the improved
drainage will ensure that your soil is warm and dry weeks if not months before
everyone else’s. And, you don’t have to
wait for those windows of opportunity to haul out the tiller and/or tractor
to prepare your soil. When you clear
your beds in the fall, you are preparing them for spring. All you have to do is tip toe out there on
some warm, sunny day and poke a few seeds in the ground. It’s as easy as that! And because you don’t have to get the tractor
onto the sodden, muddy, frozen ground you also don’t have to worry about taking
down or putting up any fencing like we used to do when we used the tractor to
till. The beds and their protection are
permanent fixtures.
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Tim brings the tiller out to the potato patch each spring and wonders
why it is not working as well as when we stored it away. It never fails. |
A very close second to the longer growing season is no paths
to maintain. Let’s face it. In a traditional row style garden there is
about 3 times as much space devoted to path than to row. This means you are spending most of your time
defending soil which is not working for you.
You plant two rows, and in between is 3 or 4 feet of trodden down,
compacted, weedy, likely muddy, soil which has to be weeded all season, and
then uncompacted for next year.
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| Not only are my seedlings getting a good start, the weeds in the paths are flourishing |
And why are all these weeds flourishing in the paths? Because you are watering and fertilizing
them. That’s right, you are wasting
time, effort, and money feeding your weeds and then pulling them back out! Duh!
Having your plants rounded up into neat beds, and planted close together
means you only have to maintain the soil right in and around your plants. And that is where your water and fertilizers
or soil amendments will be concentrated.
There is quite simply a fraction of the manual labor, cost and time
spent on raised beds as opposed to traditional row cropping.
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In the fall, a layer of chopped leaves is weighed down by a layer of composted horse manure.
New growth of garlic pokes through. |
Another benefit of raised beds is the ease of lasagna
gardening. Because you are not walking
on your soil, and fertilizing weeds growing in it, you never have to fluff the
soil or grind up the weeds and turn them under.
This means that over time you will have fewer and fewer weeds. And more and more earth worms (because you
aren’t destroying their tunnels).
Because you never really have to turn your soil, you just keep adding
layers of organic soil amendments, feeding your worms, blocking your weeds, and
going on your merry way. And because you
are not continually tilling your soil, and you are rounding it up into structured
beds, you get less erosion. If you have
to garden on a slope, you can lay out and construct tiers or terraces to work
with the lay of the land and even turn a useless piece into a productive
garden.
So those are the benefits.
What are the challenges? Well.
Permanence is your challenge. Along with
space limitations. Plan poorly, and you
have to live with it for awhile. So it
is very important to plan well.
#1. How much space do
you need? This is where square foot
gardening concepts come into play. A
tomato plant requires at least one square foot of space. However, if you plant indeterminate varieties
one foot apart, you may find you have over crowded them. A pepper plant requires one square foot of
space. Intersperse your tomatoes and peppers
and the relative height of the plants reduces your crowding. If you generally plant a 10 foot row of bush
beans, remember that you can plant two or three "rows" 6 to 8 inches apart and get twice
as many beans into the same length.
#2. What will your bed dimensions be? Don’t make the beds any wider than twice the
length of your reach. This means about 4
feet. But if you use 6” x 6” material,
and you make your bed 4 feet wide, you will only get a 3 foot width of growing
space. Consider for a moment trying to hill
potatoes in a 3 foot wide space. Adding soil and then having to remove it again at harvest... Ahh! See? It sucks.
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Careful mapping out of crop requirements allows you to maximize planting.
Here bean and cucumbers coexist peacefully |
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and later in the summer, the sunflowers in the center
have grown tall enough to support the climbing vines. |
#3. What will your
rotation be? To make crop rotation
planning easier for the rest of your life, figure out how many crop types you
will plant and then build beds in multiples of that number. Vegetables are divided into 6 main
families. By avoiding planting the same
family in the same spot two years in a row, you limit the establishment of
diseases that destroy those crops, as well as avoid stripping your soil of whatever
nutrients that crop uses most of. I grow
mainly Solanaceous (Eggplant, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes), Legumes (Beans and
Peas) and Cucurbits (Cucumbers,melons, squash, pumpkins, watermelons). So I need at least 3 beds, or 6 or 9. I grow
two beds of each type, so my minimum is 6 beds. Additionally you should allow
at least 4 years between repeating crops, not 3 like I usually get. Ideally, I would have at least 8 beds
allowing me to rest one bed a year, and keep up my rotation.
Cucurbit
|
Cucumbers,melons, squash, pumpkins,
watermelons
|
Legume
|
Beans, peas
|
Solanaceous
|
Eggplant, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes
|
Allium
|
Chive, garlic, leek, onion, shallot
|
Umbelliferae
|
Carrots, parsley, dill, fennel,coriander,
parsnip
|
Crucifer
|
Broccoli, brussels sprouts,
cabbage,cauliflower, kale, radishes, turnips
|
#4. Are all of your
beds really going to be equal? To further
complicate my rotation, not all of my beds get the same amount of sun. Because of the placement of the garden shed
on the east, and a partial tree line on the west, the southern row of beds gets
about 2 hours a day less sun than the northern row of beds. Hhhmmmmpppfff…
 |
Foliage color shows me that the blood meal added to the right side of the bed
should have been added to the left side as well. |
And you will find “dead zones” in your soil. No matter how carefully you amend, you will
periodically find an area in your beds that isn’t producing as well as it
should. Or you might get a pest issue in
one bed and need to spend a season solarizing it or resting it. Plan more beds than you think you need!
Remember, not all of your beds have to be identical. If I had a do-over I would build three
different sizes of beds. I would have a
few half sized beds for herbs, or onions or cut flowers or just
experiments. Sure, you can plant half a
bed, but having half sized beds appeals more to my planning and asthetics. I would have double size beds for crops that
require more space like potatoes or melons.
We have added two double size beds after the fact and they are outside
of the garden fence. This means we have
to have alternate methods of deer/rabbit defense. That is usually in the form of a crop cover. Easy enough for low uniform height crops like
beans or even potatoes, but not feasible for tall items like tomatoes or pole
beans. Which means the unprotected beds
have their own rotation.
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Tall hog panel fencing can be reinforced at the bottom with hardware cloth
which will keep out smaller pests like woodchucks and rabbits. |
Speaking of fencing.
Fence the whole thing. The bigger
the better! Our garden shed is outside our fence. Which isn’t a big deal, but when you leave the
garden shed on the way back to the house, it would be easier to know you have
just shut the garden gate behind you rather than remember if you shut the
garden gate 10 minutes ago when you left the garden on the way to the shed. And those nice pots of petunias by the shed
door? Not protected. Cold frame?
Not protected. You can’t leave
the lid open during the heat of the day and be sure that Bambi isn’t going to
wander by and stop for a snack.
Patio? Not protected. I can’t
leave a bunch of flats of seedlings in the partial shade of the patio because
there could be hoof prints through them by tomorrow. Apple trees?
Not protected. You catch my
drift. Put a large perimeter fence
around your entire gardening world. You
won’t regret it.
 |
This 8' x 8' bed gives me the space and flexibility to more easily maintain crops
such as potatoes and melons, but since it is outside the fence it forces me to be creative protecting my
crops from deer and rabbits |
So this is my Do-Over Raised Bed Planning list:
1.
Build a couple more beds than you think you will
need.
2.
Don’t lock into one dimension, or even
shape. Give yourself some flexibility.
3.
Fence in as large an area as you can afford.
4.
Study you sun patterns very carefully and
remember that any structures or plantings you add in the future may affect
them.
There are a few things I would do differently, now that I've lived with it for awhile, but one thing I will never do is go back to rottotilling and rows style gardening. I'm a raised bed convert through and through.
Footnote: One thing I failed to mention is the material chosen for the walkways. It probably deserves it's own blog. We have
landscape fabric covered in gravel. It is clean and easy to maintain. Weeds (and tomatoes... and cat nip... and pansies) do grow in it but they are easily removed one by one or en masse with a metal rake. The gravel collects and holds heat which is great in a cooler climate like western NY, but may be too much in the deep south where added heat is not a benefit.
