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Making raised beds
- Thread starter esshup
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I'd like to point out that I'm not against raised beds. They are especially useful for those that have physical limitations that makes regular gardening difficult. Bear in mind though that raised beds still require a lot of work preparing, weeding and harvesting.
And raised beds can limit the use of various gardening tools that can greatly reduce the labor involved in gardening such as Wheel Hoes and Roto-Tillers. Look into the wheel hoes that Hoss Tools sells. I collect antique Planet Jr. wheel hoes and gas powered cultivators. Plus I've got 3 working Troy-bilt 8hp rototillers.
And raised beds can limit the use of various gardening tools that can greatly reduce the labor involved in gardening such as Wheel Hoes and Roto-Tillers. Look into the wheel hoes that Hoss Tools sells. I collect antique Planet Jr. wheel hoes and gas powered cultivators. Plus I've got 3 working Troy-bilt 8hp rototillers.
How'd this mosquito get in here?
I'll be out vegetable gardening for the next few hours.
You?
Its a rhetorical question.
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Automender
ArboristSite Operative
Master Gardener friend of mine calls the rotortiller the devils pitchfork. It ruins the soil structure. However I use one.
I agree. Rototilling also redistributes natural soil microbes to non optimal depths. I try to use the rototiller to knock down winter weeds tilling to 4 inches deep of so than I broadfork the 3ft wide bet to 14 inches deep. The broadforking is much more difficult the first time it is used in a bed but gets much easier the second and third season. I don't broadfork for fall crops where I broadforked for the spring crop. Eventually beds only need broadforking every two or three years and then none at all.
I should be using winter cover crops. It's something I need to work on. I've got some Sun Hemp seed that I plan on sowing in empty beds in late July for a fall cover crop. It winter kills in this area.
That's why I'm making the raised beds wide enough to get the JD rototiller in there. Ramps up to get into the bed, ramps down to get out. 1 pass will do the whole bed with the exception of a few inches on each side.
How tall are you going to make the beds? It might not have enough resistance to bending so the sides might not be straight.
How do you make a rectangular bed with the blocks and keep the corners/ends together? It'd take roughly 90 8"x16" cinderblocks to make the bed, how many of those blocks? At the local big box store they are 2x the price of the cinderblocks.
Your sides go into the ground some 20"? And your drip irrigation system uses a pump. What size (gpm)? Would something like that work with soaker hoses and an ibc tote of rain water?
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AND,, the concrete is limestone, so the block will constantly be raising the pH,, not good.
I live in Virginia, we always fought low pH due to acid rain,,
now, they quit burning coal for electricity, no more acid rain, my soil pH is going over 7.
I had to start buying sulfur to acidify the soil,,,
No, my 8 inch sides sit on the surface and the soil has been dug to 24 inches deep. In my area in N/E Georgia raised bed offer little to no advantage other than better drainage. If fact the soil in raised bed can get too warm for plant roots mid summer. This is not a problem further north.
My pump is a 1/2 horsepower jet pump is a household domestic water pump. We have a total of 5,000 gallons of rain water storage and a lot of it is in IBC totes but we do have a 1,000 and a 1,100 gallon tanks.
Absolutely you can drive soaker hoses with such a pump. I run our drip and feed 1,200 feet of drip line all at once. I have a pressure gauge on the pump and one after the filter on the drip system. A water valve allows me to return excess pressured water back to the tank from which it is being drawn. This allows me to adjust pressure. I usually run the system for an hour or so and drain a 300 gallon IBC tote. I always work in the garden when irrigating and keep a close eye on the system. As the filter picks up debris I often have to up the pressure feeding the system, but just a little.
We also mix water soluble fertilizer and urine in a 55 gallon topless barrel and are able to have it drawn into the water pump that then gets distributed into the whole drip irrigation system. There is a valve on each of the 26 fifty foot drip lines so we can control which beds get fertigated, because not all beds and their crops need fed fertilizer depending on their stage of growth. For instance last summer we had 10 fifty foot rows of corn and several times I fed (side dressed) those rows and only those rows with a human urine water mix at 6 gallons of urine per 50 gallons of water. The final water/urine mix hitting the drip lines would be in the neighborhood of 6 gallons of urine per 200 gallons of water.
As you can tell, I love to talk gardening, with even a little math thrown in.
I don't mind a bit. You've answered my next questions also. Good information, thanks.
Some type of Sulfate?
All raised beds require more water, no mater what the construction material is made of. Even raised beds made entirely of soil require more water.
And have higher soil temperatures, too. Good in the spring but can be to high in mid summer in the south.
They could until they get saturated. I'd have a drip system in the garden on a timer, so I can always adjust the amount of water. I learned a while back, don't rely on myself remembering to turn off the sprinkler........................
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