UPDATE:
I have added new photos and text, revised the galleries and moved everything to a new website.
The beds are shown being prepared, in their finished state and with emerged seedlings after several days of rain.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/market-farming/farmpix/raisedbeds/
I am interested in listing (free) websites for small farms, seed
and plant suppliers, nurseries, CSA's and markets in NC and around
the US in market-farming.com. If you operate any of these businesses
and want to be added, email me at:
info@market-farming.com
Regarding the large production raised beds I use that I have written about in the past:
Here are shots of raised beds on the 4 acres I have in vegetable
production on my farm produced using a John Deere 3020 tractor, a
Roll-A-Cone hiller-bedder, a Howard Rotavator, a tillage tool (spring shank
cultivator) and a 3 bottom plow. I have three Yeomans plow shanks which will be
mounted on the 6' toolbar pictured below (YeomansPlowToolbar.jpg) and applied
to the entire acreage when soil moisture in low enough to avoid compaction.
I farm on a number of converging slopes so erosion is a problem, access
by tractor is also. I plan to build small temporary earth dams across
all the beds on all slopes at 100' intervals to limit erosion. I have
dug small ponds in three locations to catch nearly all runoff from the gardens.
The tall, long raised beds were prepared across the grade on the flats, along the slopes on
the contour around curves and on long runs with the grade with cross-beds at 90 degrees as
low dams every 100' for erosion control and water retention; they contain nearly all rainfall
and dispense it gradually during dry times, by soaking up into the growing beds.
During heavy rains the beds look like chinampas and the catchment ponds fill up.
I have added improved hilling disk hub/axle/mounting assemblies to the Roll-A-Cone hiller-bedder
and a row of 4 20" tillage tines with chisel points along the rear toolbar,
between the disks, for extra seedbed tilthing, widening and levelling,
cutting narrow planting furrows and plowdown of crop stubble and weeds.
11/07/2006
I grow vegetable crops on four acres using a finely tuned grid of raised beds that cover slopes,
curves and flat terrain. This system of parallel rows of beds has water/erosion breaks/dams every
50-150 feet to contain rainfall and prevent erosion. Half of the beds are very tall with deep furrows
between and the other half are lower and wider with shallower furrows but with more growing area and
less water impoundment between them. So, I get a lot of free irrigation and almost no loss of nutrients
and micronutrients to runoff or leaching. When the furrows fill with rainfall and runoff from the tops
of the beds this water will be absorbed laterally back into the beds before going into the subsoil.
So, I keep my nutrients on site and recycle them.
The equipment in the order used:
1) Yeomans Plow
2) Bottom plow
3) Howard Rotavator
(there's a pile of quarry rock dust in the background)
4) Tillage tool/spring tooth field cultivator
5) Hiller-bedder with chisel plow shanks
Maintenance involves always using 5) and often 3) and occasionally 1)
My crops look great with robust color, size and yield. I get excellent germination,
rapid growth, drought resistance, almost no insect predation and no fungal or bacterial
diseases or blight of any kind so far. I think the good flavor of my produce is due to:
1) The extensive use of finely ground rock dusts from rock quarries as soil amendments:
When I have manure or compost to put on the gardens I always mix it 50%-50% with rock dusts before applying
with a skid loader along the tops of the beds; I then rototill it all in - this leaves the rock dust in the top 12-16" of the soil.
I have applied hundreds of tons of these materials over 4 acres of cropland:
Quarry #1 - volcanic tuff (basalt?)
Quarry #2 - granite (grom grey rock with the little reflective sparklies)
Quarry #3 - other powdered grey granite
Quarry #4 - pyrophyllite screenings (an aggregate no larger than 200 mesh containing some talcum; .2% potash)
I have noticed that the root systems of my crops are huge and penetrate very deeply. Today I pulled a half inch carrot
with a 3" taproot and a 3' turnip green plant. The extensive rosette of fine feeder roots that develop on most of my
crop plants is astounding. If plants are spaced correctly with plenty of room, light and water they will grow to enormous size.
Some of these rock powders are so fine that when put into solution with water it turns cloudy and stays that way for quite a while.
Some people living in high country near Hunza area drink white/grey cloudy water from pure, clean cold mountain streams.
A high percentage of them live to a hundred and beyond, in robust good health.
2) adequate, balanced plant nutrition using a wide variety of soil amendments that include:
manures: chicken, cow and horse, some goat
compost: weed and crop plowdown, baled hay (grass and weeds; broomstraw makes the very best for mulch)
This coming year I will be mulching about an acre of beds for tomatoes, potatoes and peppers with
unrolled new round bales of broomstraw hay.
aragonite, high calcium limestone, azomite, alfalfa meal, blood meal, dried kelp seaweed meal, rock phosphate,
colloidal phosphate from: Idaho, NC Black, Tenessee, Florida rock & Florida colloidal [CalPhos]) New Jersey Greensand,
crab meal, fish meal, dolomitic limestone
3) highly aerated, highly mineralized, well drained raised bed culture of crops, eventually highly biologically active
once I kick the rotovator habit (when I have reduced the weed seed bank to the point that I can get a food crop rather
than more humus from having to till everything under to keep the weeds from going to seed.)
4) I haven't tried enhanced compost tea (Soil Foodweb recommended), EM or IM or Gil Carandang's methods but I feel this
will eventually be necessary and will make a huge difference in crop flavor and yield.
Equipment, Ponds, Bed Preparation, Projects
Roll-A-Cone-Hiller-Bedder
HowardRotavator-50inch
Howard Rotavator
YeomansPlowToolbar
bottomplow-tillagetool-YeomansPlowToolbar
Yeomans Plow 1
Yeomans Plow 2
Yeomans Plow 3
Yeomans plow 4
Yeomans plow 5
Yeomans plow in use
hiller-bedder-1
hiller-bedder-2
hiller-bedder-3
hiller-bedder-4
hiller-bedder-5
hilling-bedding1
hilling-bedding2
hilling-bedding3
hilling-bedding4
catchment-erosioncontrol
Small Pond 1-1
Small Pond 1-2
Small Pond 1-3
arugula
turnip greens
Raised Beds, during and after preparation
(dry & in preparation, planted & rained on, showing water retention dams & ditches, with emerged seedlings)
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These pix show extra plant growth on higher portions of beds further away from standing water in adjoining ditches:
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