Raised Bed Gardening, the not-so-easy-way!

Some 35+ years ago my late father stumbled onto a gardening method that was a bit out of the normal, to say the least. I can remember many of our neighbors and relatives joking about the unusual method. That is, up until harvest time came around. Then everyone wanted to know what "fertilizers" he was using. Where he got the chemicals, and how much... blah blah blah... Well, he did it without chemicals. At least, not the kind you buy over the counter, or at an Ag dealer, or chemical/fertilizer depot.

An old, and I mean OOOOOLD Indian chief and his wife shared their method with my dad one evening. He thought "If they have been doing it like that for centuries, why not try it?" It worked SO well that we never planted a flat land garden in all the years I can remember while growing up. And I can say, it's the method I use now.

The garden tract you see was actually my east yard. It was just a patch of lawn, heavily shaded lawn at that. In the summer the sun would barely reach much of the garden due to the giant Maple trees that surrounded it. Added to that dilemma, was the fact that the soil was just white sugar sand. There was about 1 inch or so of scabby top soil that barely supported the grass. If the mower was set too shallow, it'd scalp out a bit of the lawn and it would look like a sand trap at a golf course. Barely anything would grow, even the grass had trouble.

Great place for a garden right!!!?? Well, maybe if you are trying to trap golf balls. But that is what I started out with. The first year, I ran the rototiller across the "lawn" to chop up the scrappy topsoil and all the sod. Then I raked it into small shallow hills, spaced about 2 feet apart. Between the beds I laid down a 2 inch layer of wood chips and sawdust. For that first year, the only thing I grew in that entire garden patch was potatoes. Every bed had nothing but spuds in it. Once the plants had sprouted through the beds I put down layer after layer of old moldy hay , lawn trimmings, and just about anything I needed to "rake" up through out the year. We don't fertilize our lawns, so all this work is still chem-free. That first year was nothing special for harvest, but I didn't expect anything out of it anyway. I wasn't growing "plants" that year, I was making "dirt" for the following year. LOTS of dirt!

I don't have any photos of that first year, but here are a few from the following year. And no, I'm not burying bodies, promise! From sugar sand to:

This was all done several years ago by now. As my family has grown, we have had to move the gardens (plural now) to much larger areas of land on our property. That small shady spot in the old lawn isn't nearly big enough now. We will be documenting some of those new gardens as this year gets under way. You will be seeing our methods in the greenhouse/ high tunnel updates, and in the various upcoming garden work we will be doing once the ground outside the greenhouse is ready.

But WHY all of those raised beds/hills? Eh... I have a fetish for working with a rake??? NOT! Actually, the raised beds offer the following benefits:

-Thermal Mass: The beds hold heat and that means earlier to plant into, earlier start on the "season" and a longer growing season to work with. In general the beds allow me to cheat one if not 2 full growing "Zones."

-Water Management: They permit great drainage, but also retain moisture far far far better than flat land.

-Soil Compaction: Actually, lack of it. The beds stay light and fluffy to allow great root growth. And a fantastic environment for earthworms of all kinds. After a rain or sprinklers have run, the beds look like giant heaps of vermiculite/ worm poop. If yer into gardening, this is GOLD baby!!

-Plant Density: Since each bed is so large and "fluffy" it can easily support more than one plant in close proximity to one another. My general rule is 4x as many living things in one spot as you would find in a flat land tract. You can get away with over crowding in this case because there is soooo much room for all the roots on each plant to grow into. Companion planting in this way really really shines! See if you can count how many tomato plants are in this picture: (hint, the bed is just under 4 feet long and about 18 inches wide)

Heh, that bed is not just tomatoes ;-) I companion planted Borage aka, Star Flower in amongst the 'mater plants. Count the Borage plants and multiply by 3 = 12 tomato plants in that itty bitty space. Every one of those cusses grew to 20 foot lengths that year. I had to put them up on A-frame trellises to keep em off the ground. Our entire year's supply of tomatoes came off that one bed that year. Now we grow them in about a dozen beds, 60' long or so.

Here are a few more pics of that garden:

Corn stalks (in a raised bed? yep!) The rope in the photo is 5/8" thick... those stalks were almost 3 inches across with a month left to grow yet. The peas planted amongst the corn are pushing 5 inch leaves at their base!

The images don't show the end of the season that year. We were waaaay too busy with harvest and canning to take pics. The corn ended up at 25 to 28 feet tall (not counting the 18" height of the bed) with either 2, 3 or even 4 ears per plant. Each ear was about 10" long and 3" or so across. The chard was almost 4 feet tall and some of the leaves were almost a foot wide.

Not too shabby for "sugar sand." So that's a preview of how things go around here in the gardens. Keep a follow on us as we start our 2018 season. Oh, and look out for an explanation of what we use for "fertilizer." (hint, it still doesn't come from a bottle, bag, store, or an ag depot)