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  • From: "Square Ft Gardening" <mike_jordan AT squareftgardening.com>
  • To: "'Market Farming'" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] width of beds
  • Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:51:40 -0600

Scott,
The one thing to keep in mind in figuring bed width is accessibility. At
54" I would say that you would want to have a board or flat stone or
something placed in the middle to step on to reach into the bed that far. I
personally wouldn't do that. 36" inches is what Elliot Coleman uses because
he finds that he can step over that width easily. He also finds that he can
straddle the be to pick things. This was also the width that was used by
Market gardeners in the mid 1800's. 4' is the other dimension that is very
often used because most people can reach into the bed halfway from either
side. One of the things that is usually being considered in determining bed
width is the amount of space lost to paths in between the beds. The
narrower the beds the more paths and thus loss of growing space. The French
intensive gardeners used a nominal width for paths of 12" and carried
everything by hand to the beds. In many other garden systems this dimension
goes all the way up to 3ft. The main concern is accessibility by equipment.
Wheel barrows etc. Since we're talking about market farming then this also
might involve bigger equipment. These things need to be looked at for both
the width of path and width of bed. I have found that 18" paths with 4'
wide beds works for many scenerios in a more "manual" operation with wider
beds for a wheelbarrow at convenient places.

Hope this helps
Mike Jordan
Continuousharvest.com
SquareFtGardening.com

-----Original Message-----
From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Goodwill at
Homefields Farm
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 7:50 AM
To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Market-farming] width of beds

A little while back, bed width was mentioned...was there a discussion of
the pros and cons that I missed? We are going to go from 36 inch beds
to 54, but can change back if necessary.

Scott
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