Everything has its place. I think people do probably over use them, but some of what gene says here is absolutely incorrect. On sloping terrain raise beds with properly build foundations actually conserve water and can act like 'sponges' and when you plant things in between the beds you do actually have an easier time irrigating and improve yields. I don't understand his comment about roots coming in to contact with
soggy soil , it sounds like he's never seen a 8' high raised bed, he's
talking about something 1'-2' agl which is one type of raised bed - a little different than what I've seen people do on sloping land or clay soils.
Some soils actually hold minerals 18" or so below the O and A horizons, and flipping them every couple years actually does help nutrients get to plant roots. Some soils, some conditions. I've always liked Wendell Berry's quote about 'farming fitting the farm' , seems to fit gardens too.
To be fair Gene lives in the flatlands and right along where the wisconsonian glacier left its alluvials 70,000 years ago, probably enough left over runoff from old lake chicago that he'll never worry about fertility or porous soils that lose theirs. In defense of raised beds, I like the idea of being able to harvest without having to test my back , but to be honest I'm neither double digging nor raising my beds right now. But If I thought it would improve things, I wouldn't hestitate to do
so.
--- On Fri, 5/1/09, kate spinner <kespinner@gmail.com> wrote:
From: kate spinner <kespinner@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] "Down with raised beds" by Gene Logsdon
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Friday, May 1, 2009, 9:43 PM
Raised beds seem to be pretty popular in urban parts of Southwest Florida, where the soil is sandy and nutrient poor. In the cities here people are using raised beds and earth boxes to plant gardens along cement sidewalks and condominium balconies.
Also, in cold climates, such as Montana, I think raised beds help retain heat to extend the growing season, something I wouldn't frown upon if I lived up there and wanted to keep growing fresh vegetables as long as possible.
Down with raised beds
by Gene Logsdon
From Gene Logsdon
Garden Farm Skills
The only raised bed I’ve ever found useful in sixty years of
gardening is the one in my bedroom. And after I quit double-digging,
I didn’t have to spend as much time there either. Or if I did, it
was for reasons other than resting.
I must be wrong, but I don’t understand the modern enchantment with
raised beds. Yes, if you are a market gardener, you will no doubt
feel obliged to plant on raised beds to get the earliest possible
crops but you can get early vegetables in unraised beds too. I have a
very disgusting sister who plants peas in March here in northern
Ohio, and often gets away with it, without raised beds.
If you want to plant a garden on an old parking lot (I have a hunch
there will be many abandoned ones in the future) then by all means
you will need a raised bed. (It should give us all pause, however,
to realize that plants can come right up through cracks in pavement
and grow vigorously— so what’s that say about all our dearly held
beliefs about gardening?) And definitely, if you want to plant a
garden on something akin to swampland, you will surely want a raised
bed. But the poorly-drained soil under it will still “lay wet”
and give you problems when your plants put down deep roots.
Other than those situations, raised beds guarantee only one result as
far as I can see. You will have to irrigate more when dry weather
comes and it comes quicker on raised beds. All of us gardeners pride
ourselves in being eco-friendly. What is so ecological about using
water (and the power to pump it) when you can avoid doing so? Also,
if you are bound and determined to make raised beds, a veteran market
gardener just told me that you should be sure to mulch the paths
heavily around the raised beds. Otherwise moisture will be drawn out
of the bed even faster. So why not just go with unraised beds and
mulch them?
My disgusting sister who gloats about having peas two weeks before I
do without raised beds has been fertilizing her garden heavily with
composted manure every year for at least half a century. Her soil is
so rich you could stick a broom handle in it and it would grow. When
you make soil like that, who needs raised beds? Even she still has
to replant some years because peas have a tendency to rot rather
than sprout if it snows too hard after planting. Needless to say,
that would also be true on raised beds.
I have almost the same kind of bias about double-digging. To turn
compacted soils into a productive garden, double-digging makes sense
the first year or two, I suppose. But I will bet a bushel of surplus
tomatoes (from soil never double-dug), that if you have that kind of
compaction problem, it will take quite a few years of mulch, compost
and avoidance of unnecessary tillage to change it, and double-digging
won’t speed up the time.
Please tell me how you increase the fertility of your soil, if you
bury unfertile soil on top with the unfertile soil underneath it. Or
if the soil on top is fertile, why bury it under the less fertile
soil underneath. If both the topsoil and the soil under it are
fertile, is it not just loony to risk throwing your back out of whack
by double-digging? If compaction is the problem, shouldn’t you be
attacking the cause? Usually compaction comes when a clay soil needs
underlying tile drainage. The impatient gardener roto-tills too
deeply before the soil is sufficiently dried out and that happens on
raised beds too.
Okay, so I’m being a little facetious here. Correct double-digging
is not exactly the way I describe. It is even loonier. You dig up a
spade’s worth of soil across the garden plot that you are about to
desecrate. You put it in a wheelbarrow. Then you loosen up a spade’s
depth below that. Then you dig up the next trench’s worth and put it
where the dirt in the wheelbarrow had been, being careful to keep the
topmost soil on top even though, and I just watched a gardener doing
this, there is absolutely no difference between the soil on top and
the soil four inches below it. And so you proceed until you have
moved the top layer of soil over about six inches. Then, if you have
not yet slipped a disc or two, you put the wheelbarrow load in the
last trench. Never in the entire process is the cause of the
compaction, real or imagined, addressed and so the suffering double-
diggers figure they must move the top layer of their garden over
another six inches next year, until knee surgery do us part.
Maybe you have arguments in favor of raised beds and/or double-
digging that I don’t appreciate. I’ll bow to your expertise if
that is so. But since I get gobs more food from my garden than I can
ever eat without these tortures, why would I want to torment myself
and end my gardening life too early? I would rather spend that time
in another kind of raised bed I highly recommend. A hammock.
~
See also Small farm web services and ecommerce for small farmers→
~~
Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in
Wyandot County, Ohio.
Gene is author of The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the
Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land)
and The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
Gene’s Posts
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks to Dave Smith, publisher of OrganicToBe.org
http://chihuahuavalley.net
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