Raised Beds and Water Wands

Along with compost and close planting, John Jeavons advocates growing in raised bed, building beds that are easily accessible from both sides (hence the standard four-foot width), and using open-pollinated seed rather than hybrid seed.  In addition, planting seed directly into beds is discouraged.  With small starter plats, it is easier to establish close planting patterns.  Jeavons’ system also recommends maintaining a part of each farm in a wild state, growing compost crops, double-digging all growing beds, and hand-watering.

I use most, but not all, of his ideas.  I prefer to grow at groundlevel but adding compost each year has naturally increased the height of each bed.  They are now boxed in.  Double-digging involves breaking up the soil to not one depth of a spade, but two.  This excavation even sounds exhausting!  I use a rototiller instead of a spade to turn over soil for new beds and let plants’ roots loosen deeper layers of soil.

In some cases I water by hand, but I also use “water wands.”  These clever tubes, invented by a California friend are made of 1/2 inch, schedule-40, plastic pipe drilled with tiny holes at 6 inch intervals.  I use two in each bed.  When hooked to the garden hose for ten minutes, the wands produces a slow soaking drizzle that supplies a week’s worth of water.

Since the Town of Stonigton has a vast leaf-composting project at the town dump, I do not grow composting crops.   Creating leaf compost takes six to eight months and begins as residents deliver their fall leaves in tarps, bags, or truck beds.  By December, individual loads of leaves gradually turn into four or five 100-foot long wind rows.  It’s leaves only here.  Brush and weed are delivered to a separate area.  

By spring, 1,500 tons of leaf compost are available for pick up.  Town residents flock to the pile, which is now the size of two semi-trailers parked end to end.  To screen or not to screen?  That’s an important question.  Sticks and stones and plastic pieces abound.  Fussier gardeners bring various homemade contraptions to eliminate rougher elements. For larger loads, if staff is available, a bucket loader will fill your pick-up truck.  For the rest of us, it’s five gallon buckets and a lot of trips.