Intensive Gardening Work This Year Too!
I am updating an old post and moving it to the Front.
“ARE YOUR VEGETABLES TOO BIG?”
By
Charles L. Evans
Update July 2010:
We have had a cool spring here and a lot of our seed rotted in the ground. Our beds are now doing well about two months late. It looks like the intensive beds will again out perform the conventional garden about 3 to 4 times.
Not to be bragging but one of my son-in laws says that the only problem I have with a garden is that I can’t grow anything small. This was after we harvested about 1500 pounds of potatoes out of a bed about 4 feet wide and 75 feet long. He thought two pound potatoes were a bit much. Off to the side in another bed there were three pumpkins about 100 pounds each all on one plant. These did not receive any special care. A couple of years ago one 4 foot square bed of beets produce all that we could eat in the summer and about 30 quarts of canned beets.
You asked, “How can you grow so much in a small space?” I could give you the long answer that starts out—the science of gardening has come a long ways in the last few years…several discoveries have been made. But the real answer is that I am sit on your butt lazy. I don’t mind doing the work but I only want to do it once. The first year of my intensive beds is a lot of work, unless I can get into the area with my John Deere 755 compact tractor. (I call this gardening by John Deere.) The secret is in the construction of the bed.
We dig a hole about 4 feet wide and two three feet deep. This is filled about half way with any kind of carbon waste that you can find. I use weeds, cardboard, wood chips, old hay, sawdust or anything else that I can get for free. Next soil that came out off the hole is placed in a layer about 6 inches deep. The rest of the soil is mixed with hay, straw, compost or anything to make it porous and easy for root penetration. This lay can be mixed with manure, commercial fertilizer, sand, peat moss wood chips or most anything. The secret of this layer is to mix a lot of nutrient in. This is the layer where your plants will get their nutrients the first year. Make it rich.
These type of beds work best for started plants but you can direct seed into the bed if you create a fine grained surface in the top couple of inches. I plant stuff as close as I can based upon my experience. The “SQUARE FOOT GARDEN” has a lot of good information about this type of planting.
After any seed I have planted has a good start I pull the weeds and mulch the bed with about 3 inches of shredded mulch. The plants are close together and will shade most of the bed soon reducing weed growth. The mulch pretty well takes care of the rest of the weeds. There in about 500 words I have shown you how to create a lazy man’s garden.
The next year and every year there after things a easy. Clean up the beds in the spring and spread a couple of inches of compost on the bed. Rack or spade the compost into the top layer of the bed and you are ready to plant.
P.S. I’m not a purist as I have been know to use Round Up to control the grass and weeds around and between the bed. This method is a grow method not a look pretty method.
Charles L. (Bud) Evans is a retired health physicist, owner and operator of a small repair shop, former school teacher with more education than good sense. He is active in the alternate energy field and currently specializes in self reliance and internet marketing. His web site (http://pathtoselfsufficiency.com) is a treasury of information on becoming self reliant.
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