permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:

> Frank, I wich you could see the 3 acres of long/parallel arrays of 
> giant raised beds I have created with
> my new/old (1970 - rebuilt) Johann Deere 3020 (70hp) pulling, in this 
> order,  7-shank tillage tool,
> Howard Rotavator, 8" RollACone one-row 4 X 24" disk 1100 lb hiller 
> bedder.  A beautiful sight to behold.
> I never realized how much really fine garden soil I had out in the 
> fields until I got all this tillage done.
> Now to plant ... and weed.  I will asap post a lot of pix of the beds 
> and the equipment used to produce them.
> My goal is to use this equipment to create large raised beds that, 
> once shaped, will then become permanent
> notill biointensive growing beds requiring only hand labor to maintain 
> shape and productivity.  You would appreciate this stuff.


Also, really steep,  tightly packed huge raised beds offer more more 
square feet of planting space per square foot of land used.
Along the lenghts of the beds there is usually little need for 
interruption with crossover paths. You have the bed top, a flat area
44" wide and the long steep sloping sides. The walking path between beds 
can be narrow, allowing somewhat cramped foot traffic or a wheelbarrow.
These beds can run along land contours and around 90 degree curves (with 
adequate turning radius for tractor and implement).
Maybe this is, benefit for benefit, more space saving than keyhole or 
mandala gardens. A combintion of these two methods is probably best.

LL