And not that I wouldn't like waist high stone lined beds. That
would be a
lot of fun to garden.
Building stone beds consumes a huge amount of time. I spent about a
year of intermittent work on the Christina Garden. It is so time-
consuming that I could not sustain constant work on it for all the
other opportunities crying for attention. A stone walls also takes up
a lot of room and unless it is backed by reinforced concrete is
subject to breaking from frost, hydrostatic pressure or being thumped
by a runaway tractor. All that said, the reward is its beauty and
permanence.
I will build most future garden beds of ferrocement. The greatest
challenge is tying the poultry mesh together so I am designing in my
mind ways to do it more easily. Ferrocement garden bed walls are
superior to stone because they are much thinner, much stronger and go
up much faster. Ferrocement is very strong and can easily be tied
across the width of the bed, making it nigh impossible for walls to
ever lean. Actually, I want mine to purposely lean outward, the
better to get my toes against them and thus be able to more easily
reach across. Another design advantage to ferrocement is the ease of
adding sockets or braces to support various trellis or mini-hoophouse
structures.
It needs to be said that there is a disadvantage of raised beds. The
higher the bed is built, the more irrigation is needed due to
increased drainage. Thus, as walls rise in height, it becomes ever
more imperative to build and maintain soil of high organic content.
Re: [Homestead] Aging lists and listmates?!
, (continued)