The logistics of a raised bed?

[obsessed]

So I have raised beds right. But I need to amend the soil. Do I take some soil out and replace it with compost? I just think that I will be only able to add so much so often before the beds over flow. Or do I have to keep rebuilding them.

 

[davaroo]

So I have raised beds right. But I need to amend the soil. Do I take some soil out and replace it with compost? I just think that I will be only able to add so much so often before the beds over flow. Or do I have to keep rebuilding them.

Yes, to everything.
Remember, the plants deplete the soil, so you add back what they absorb. This works out to a few shovels full of compost per yard. Not all that much really.

You don't have to remove the soil unless you want to. You can shift it over to one half of the bed, amend the dug section deeply and then replace the soil. Then do it to the other section, leapfrogging your way along until your back gives out or you are finished.

 

[obsessed]

Davaroo - Now that I have a second and the kids are not clawing at me....


you said yes to everything but I still dont understand..... So what I did was when my beans and stuff was done I cut it up and left it in the beds. They I added compost and coffee grounds from the local Starbucks. Then I added some compost and some grass clippings and some newspaper for mulch. I am trying to go the way of the lasagna garden, tillin and shovelin in the southern heat a no no for me. But I feel like the beds are at their brim like they will overflow next season when I do it all overagain. And that is what I am scared of.

 

[vfem]

When a plant uses soil it removes actual nutrients which take up space! So believe it or not your dirt levels are down to below what they were when you started. A few shovel fulls of fresh compost mixed it should do you great replacing everything another planting will need from your beds. No need to remove the soil at all!

 

[obsessed]

Great thanks .....I understand a bit more now.....

 

[davaroo]

When a plant uses soil it removes actual nutrients which take up space! So believe it or not your dirt levels are down to below what they were when you started. A few shovel fulls of fresh compost mixed it should do you great replacing everything another planting will need from your beds. No need to remove the soil at all!

This is what I meant. Sorry I wasn't clear.

Now, I'm a believer in deep amendment. Just pushing stuff around the surface layer is of limited benefit. Many of the garden plants we love are deep rooters, feeding well below the surface layer. Tomatoes, for example, run roots as deep as 18." The secret to monster garden results is feeding plants at the roots.
Deep digging aerates the soil and helps the bacteria make nutrients available to the plants. It also helps to get water down deep, which is one of the only drawback to raised beds - they can dry out.
SO when I dig, I'm generally a deep digger. For just replacing one crop with a follow on, I just turn the soil to a single spit and amend at the bottom.
But once a year, at the end of the season, I will double dig. This involves moving soil out of the way, getting down to the depth of another spit and amending down there.

 

[patandchickens]

Sorry David but I'm going to disagree on this one. Unless you are in a hurry or your soil is in really sad shape at present, there is really no pressing reason to physically mix amendments in.

Worms are the biggest reason. Worms are nature's squishy little tillers , seriously -- they turn over really impressive amounts of soil in their activities, and mix the upper and lower layers together. (Other invertebrates contribute too, especially ants in the vicinity of large anthills, but worms do most of the work)

Roots are another, albeit more minor, reason. Plants use nutrients nearer the surface to help them grow roots downwards; those deep roots then die and decompose, and presto, nutrients and organic matter are being added to the lower parts of the soil.

And finally (well, the last of the *significant* processes that operate in a typical garden, anyhow) when you plant, and then at other times pull up, whatever you're growing in teh garden, that achieves substantial physical mixing of the soil, too.

It's not like forests and native meadows have sweaty deer pushing Toro tillers across them every couple years, and it's not like they've ever been double-dug. And yet they typically have quite good soil, and often quite DEEP good soil compared to an average garden. Leaves and dead grass and such pile up on top of the soil each fall, are broken down, and incorporated all throughout the soil by worms and other invertebrates. And the other processes described above too, with the substitution of natural death and disturbance for the person with the trowel of course.

This is not theory, or abstruse science (although it is quite well documented in natural ecosystems), it's what you actually see happen in the garden if you quit tilling and digging long enough to give it a chance.

As an example, the perennial bed right in front of my house started out as about 4-5" of crappy clayey topsoil over dead-solid-clay subsoil. It has never, not at any point whatsoever, been dug over (started out by smothering the lawn under landscape fabric and mulch, with plants put into holes cut in the landscape fabric); the only disturbance has been when I dig a hole to put in a plant or, occasionally, remove one. I have added 2-3 inches of mulch every year for the past 6 years, more in some of those years (not all at once). It now has good dark soil down at least 10" (I have not prospected to see how deep it goes) and whereas you could not use a trowel for the first few years, needed the additional force of a spade or digging bar to make a planting hole, I can now just scoop a hole out with my hand if I want to plant.

If you read a lot of gardening books, you will also notice that most of the really good gardeners (as opposed to histrionic writers or good marketers or people hooked up with great photographers) comment that although they were taught to double-dig, they've long since quit doing it because they don't see any difference made that way. So, it is not just some crazy idea that Pat has, she has company

I'm not saying I've never double-dug anything. My current vegetable plot, for instance, has been more or less double-dug, because it started out really, really clayey and with too-thin soil, and I am middle aged and no longer feel like waiting forever for a decent tomato harvest Also it let me get most of the thistle roots out. But that is the LAST time that bed will ever be double-dug, and it's not something I'd do even once unless I were in a hurry. After the first few years, it just doesn't make any difference whether you double-dug it once upon a time, you know?

Not meaning to interfere with anyone's exercise regime of course <g>

For raised beds, I would never contemplate *removing* soil unless I was having some (pretty unlikely) serious problem with my plants. Just top it off, heapingly!, with new compost and any other amendments in the fall at the end of the growing season. It will have settled down to level by spring, and things will be on their way to mixing in. If you really want to stir it a little with a digging fork, fine, but you don't *have* to.

JME, good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[davaroo]

Sorry David but I'm going to disagree on this one. Unless you are in a hurry or your soil is in really sad shape at present, there is really no pressing reason to physically mix amendments in.

Worms are the biggest reason. Worms are nature's squishy little tillers , seriously -- they turn over really impressive amounts of soil in their activities, and mix the upper and lower layers together. (Other invertebrates contribute too, especially ants in the vicinity of large anthills, but worms do most of the work)

Roots are another, albeit more minor, reason. Plants use nutrients nearer the surface to help them grow roots downwards; those deep roots then die and decompose, and presto, nutrients and organic matter are being added to the lower parts of the soil.

And finally (well, the last of the *significant* processes that operate in a typical garden, anyhow) when you plant, and then at other times pull up, whatever you're growing in teh garden, that achieves substantial physical mixing of the soil, too.

It's not like forests and native meadows have sweaty deer pushing Toro tillers across them every couple years, and it's not like they've ever been double-dug. And yet they typically have quite good soil, and often quite DEEP good soil compared to an average garden. Leaves and dead grass and such pile up on top of the soil each fall, are broken down, and incorporated all throughout the soil by worms and other invertebrates. And the other processes described above too, with the substitution of natural death and disturbance for the person with the trowel of course.

This is not theory, or abstruse science (although it is quite well documented in natural ecosystems), it's what you actually see happen in the garden if you quit tilling and digging long enough to give it a chance.

As an example, the perennial bed right in front of my house started out as about 4-5" of crappy clayey topsoil over dead-solid-clay subsoil. It has never, not at any point whatsoever, been dug over (started out by smothering the lawn under landscape fabric and mulch, with plants put into holes cut in the landscape fabric); the only disturbance has been when I dig a hole to put in a plant or, occasionally, remove one. I have added 2-3 inches of mulch every year for the past 6 years, more in some of those years (not all at once). It now has good dark soil down at least 10" (I have not prospected to see how deep it goes) and whereas you could not use a trowel for the first few years, needed the additional force of a spade or digging bar to make a planting hole, I can now just scoop a hole out with my hand if I want to plant.

If you read a lot of gardening books, you will also notice that most of the really good gardeners (as opposed to histrionic writers or good marketers or people hooked up with great photographers) comment that although they were taught to double-dig, they've long since quit doing it because they don't see any difference made that way. So, it is not just some crazy idea that Pat has, she has company

I'm not saying I've never double-dug anything. My current vegetable plot, for instance, has been more or less double-dug, because it started out really, really clayey and with too-thin soil, and I am middle aged and no longer feel like waiting forever for a decent tomato harvest Also it let me get most of the thistle roots out. But that is the LAST time that bed will ever be double-dug, and it's not something I'd do even once unless I were in a hurry. After the first few years, it just doesn't make any difference whether you double-dug it once upon a time, you know?

Not meaning to interfere with anyone's exercise regime of course <g>

For raised beds, I would never contemplate *removing* soil unless I was having some (pretty unlikely) serious problem with my plants. Just top it off, heapingly!, with new compost and any other amendments in the fall at the end of the growing season. It will have settled down to level by spring, and things will be on their way to mixing in. If you really want to stir it a little with a digging fork, fine, but you don't *have* to.

JME, good luck, have fun,

Pat

Whatever works, Pat.

When I remove soil it goes back in. I only move it out of the way to get the goodies down deep. It isnt too hard in the worked beds, since they are loose. I recently learned about a guy who doesn't dig at all. SO there is some meri to what you are saying.

Its just that my plot is so danged rooty - it was former forest floor. Every time I open a new section, or come back to previous ones, I have little choice but to dig. I know it is old school but it does work.

Since I have no tiller, I gotta do something until I get a few years down the road! But Im listening, as really deep diggin is not my favorite chore...

Got any links to digging-less gardens?

 

[vfem]

I have a book here we're using while doing out raised beds. The book suggests a rotation of the beds. So each year pick half the beds to layer compost on top... then switch beds and rotate with compost the following fall.

They didn't suggest turning it into the soil until spring.

Its different for everyone. I just didn't want to leave it to nature and I have all this nice compost that will be ready in the fall to go into the beds.

(It also suggests every few years to give each bed a rest for an entire season, compost spread in or not!)

 

[obsessed]

Originally I double dug, when I made the beds. one cause I was in a hurry. I want a veggie dang it. The other was cause I have one inch of top soil and then sand. Nothing else. It is orange and couldn't pass for soil for a coconut tree. But I don't want to ever do that again. Thank you both Pat and Dave and Vhem... I love it here.