Narrow beds wide aisles with green manure. Harvest on smart beds. Placing beds in the garden: how to arrange, photos, tips

Hello. country moms! I want to show how we made narrow beds. I have quite a lot of experience working on such beds, but this year new house and new site. Therefore, it is possible to show "from the wheels" what is being done and how. Maybe someone will benefit from our experience. I must say right away that I am not convincing anyone to switch to such gardening, I am simply sharing my experience. So, we have a piece of an abandoned site, on which all the grass was pulled out in the fall. we outline on it beds 45-50 cm wide of arbitrary length. It is desirable that they be located from north to south. But we have mountains, a plot on a slope, so we planned it the way it worked.
From the place where the bed is planned, we remove the sod, and transfer it to where the passages are planned, but there is no grass! Passage width from 70 to 90 cm.
If possible, we immediately sew up the bed with boards, slate, etc. material. Our task is to fence off the garden from the passage. Grass will grow in the aisles, which we will mow and walk barefoot. And the garden bed is a place that we NEVER step on! We dig up the earth in the garden with the introduction of what you have: compost, straw, manure, sand ... our task is to make the soil loose, because it digs ONCE and never digs again! In subsequent years, the soil in the garden is only loosened with a flat cutter.
In the background are beds 80 cm wide. They are intended for potatoes and watermelons. This is what they looked like in April. If you have nothing to sew up the beds, you can simply dig them up, and fill the aisles with sawdust (for example) We didn’t have enough turf, we designed part of the site differently
.
Something like that. ) Narrow beds are often scolded for wide aisles. But the passages WORK for us! Let's calculate how many tomato bushes we plant in a "nested" way: given a distance of about 50x50, we get 4 bushes. If after 60 cm - even less. When planting tomatoes on narrow beds in one line, they are planted at a distance of 25 cm. If the bed is 45 cm + 70 cm, the passage on its square meter, we will plant the same 4 bushes. BUT! At traditional fit we don’t plant anything else on the tomato bed, because everyone needs to put a stake! In narrow beds on both sides, we can plant low crops. In our case, every centimeter is sown with carrots. Well, we love to make juice out of it! ) That is, about 40 carrots are added to 4 tomato bushes. Considering that it grows from the edge of the ridge, it grows by no means less than 200 grams each. Well, even if 150! That is, in addition to 8 tomato bushes, we have at least 6 kg of carrots per square meter. And a minimum of work.

Given the specifics of the south, we plant tomatoes in trenches. Carrots are sown much earlier. Therefore, first we make a trench for future tomatoes, and then we sow carrots on the top (on the sides of the ridge). When the tomatoes are planted, everything is mulched with straw, grass, and uprooted weeds. This is how sotra "buffalo heart" tomatoes are blooming now. The width of the "bed" is 15 cm. Curly beans grow in the background, gladioli in the center, garlic from the edge, which I plan to pull out in a month for the first jars. And these are cucumbers. At 7 meters with a width of 45 cm, 8 cucumbers were planted in the center. Strung over them plastic mesh. vertically. This is done so that the sun gets to both sides of the garden, because lettuce grows on our left, you can see how the onion sown with seeds has already grown stronger on the head. And on the right - radishes, dill and beets. Let's calculate that we will be given these 3.5 m2. From 8 bushes of cucumbers planted in this way, last year I salted 56 (!!!) liters of carnishons. + dill + onion + radish + dill that no one counts all season + about 5 kg of beets. Let them throw a slipper at me if they collect the same amount from a standard bed of 1.5 X2 m! So this year we planted strawberries. Garlic sits in the center, and beets sit between young bushes.

Narrow beds play important role in organic farming. If you want to get a good and healthy crop without chemicals, then you need to know how to make narrow beds, as well as why they are effective. But first, let's figure out why it is worth abandoning wide beds.

Look at pictures 1 and 2. This shows wide and narrow vegetable beds. For greater clarity, I took the same area occupied by the site.

Along the edges of the beds, both narrow and wide, you can’t do without a path. I assumed that the track would be 40 centimeters wide. Oh yeah... All dimensions in the pictures are in centimeters.

The area of one such track is 2 square meters with a 5-meter length of the beds (you can have it shorter or longer, and 5 meters is taken only for demonstration). Here you can safely walk, run, jump... Another path has been laid between two wide beds. But what do we get? On a narrow bed, you can safely reach the middle, so the trampling zone there is only 10 square meters. Here we do not stand on the aisles, but only on the paths.

Another thing is a wide garden. She can only dream about it. On it, one might say, in general, the whole season is trampled. At least 3 times per season you will walk between rows. And what kind of walking! .. How much harm from it! Well, I'll tell you more from here.

Imagine you came to a wide garden and saw a ripe cucumber or tomato somewhere in the middle. What will you do? Of course, you will be on the garden!

But what to do when you need to pull out a weed that is about to give seeds, or suddenly it is time to spud potatoes? There is nothing else left but to stand on the bed. So I say that at least you will walk around the garden 3 times per season. But this is the minimum!.. In fact, there are usually more than three such walks.

It would seem so what? We do not stand on the plant. But plants can be compared to an iceberg, because what we see on the surface is not the whole picture. Hidden underground is the secret life of plants. What am I telling you, you yourself know very well that not a single plant will grow without roots. But the roots of plants are not only where the stem is. In addition to the main root, the plant also has a number of small roots, and, stepping between the bushes, we thereby cut them off.

What's the difference? Just think, a spine more, a spine less ... Well, don't tell me. Why, then, do the plants get sick and give a low yield? What little "mineral water" poured? No. This is due to the weakness of the plants, as they "survive" the breakage of small roots. Have you ever had a thin heel stepped on your almost bare foot on the subway or bus during rush hour? The plant experiences almost the same thing. To survive, it will survive, but it will “limp” and get sick. And in the end also small harvest will give.

Remember that each step on the aisle is accompanied by:

a large number of dangling plant roots (you have already read about this);
compacted soil. In a compacted place, moisture evaporates very quickly from the ground;
broken stems and torn leaves of vegetables.

Narrow beds for vegetables are much more preferable than wide ones. You can also grow potatoes on them. Why not? You will see, potatoes in narrow beds will give very good harvest. It is easy and convenient also on such beds.

But the fact that they constantly trample on wide ridges does not contribute at all big harvest. Little of. The aisles of wide beds still need to be weeded, loosened, watered, and after they have been walked on, the soil needs to be loosened again ... And so the whole season. The question is, why do extra work? You have nothing to do with time? It’s better to sit once again with your children or grandchildren, or just relax and look at the beauty around.

A big plus of narrow beds is that they only need to be done once. And while one of the neighbors in the spring will form their wide beds by trampling on them and carrying dirt (in the spring there is no way without it), you can sow or plant something or just relax with might and main.

Sometimes gardeners use borders for beds, which improves functionality, since the earth does not crumble at the edges. There are other benefits of using garden fences that you can learn about.

By the way, yes, at the expense of dirt. Sow lawn grass on the paths between narrow beds and then you don’t have to “carry” the dirt around the site. You will keep everything clean and tidy. You can still cover the paths with mulch, but I like grass more because:

she looks prettier;
it is more pleasant to walk on it;
after mowing the lawn grass, we get additional material for.

And what optimal width beds? Here, as they say, a matter of taste. Starting from 90 cm and up to 110 cm. The main criterion is the convenience of work. Narrow beds will be effective if you can reach the middle of them without standing on the bed itself. They are very easy to handle. The width of the path between the beds should be at least 40 cm, and if the garden is large, then you can make some paths 70 cm wide. It will be more convenient to move the wheelbarrow around the garden.

There is also an option to make narrow beds not rectangular, but oblique. In this case, the angles will not be 90°, but 60° and 120°. I myself have never worked on such beds, but they say that they are more convenient than rectangular ones.

I hope I managed to convince you of the effectiveness of narrow beds, and if you yourself are already working on the same ones, then tell us about it. I am very interested to know your opinion too.

Narrow beds provide light work in the garden. If time, health and strength are precious to you, then make narrow beds for vegetables and you will see that most of the work will disappear by itself. Good luck!

I advise, dear readers, not to miss the publication of new materials on this blog.

For those interested in principles organic farming, as well as those who would like to arrange their garden more intelligently and reduce their participation in growing vegetables.

Basic principles of smart farming:
1. Don't dig. Constant digging of the earth significantly worsens its structure and negates the work of soil organisms working for us gardeners.
2. Do not loosen more than 5 cm. For loosening and structuring, use green manure, compost, mulching.
3. Stimulate the development of soil living creatures. You need to give organics to the soil more than you take.
4. Don't leave the soil unoccupied. This green manure, mulch.
Among us, most of all are those who grow vegetables not for sale, but for themselves, for their families. And in fact, by processing a much smaller area of beds, we can get the same, and most likely even more, yield.
The literature describes many ways to arrange beds of a small area, using different principles cultivation. For example, D. Mittlider developed his own system, according to which plants are planted in narrow beds filled with a neutral substrate (sawdust, for example, or expanded clay) and then watered with a carefully balanced fertilizer solution. Wide aisles are cleared of weeds completely.
Another option, popularized by N. Kurdyumov, is to create narrow beds in the form of trenches or boxes. Their width is 50 cm, length - any. Each bed is two rows of vegetables planted along the edges. There is a huge reserve of productivity hidden in this geometry. It has long been noticed: the extreme plants develop almost twice as well as those in the middle - they have much more light and room for growth.
More about trenches and boxes.
If your site is never flooded, this option is suitable: a narrow bed is planned in the form of a trench, directly from the soil. You need to orient the garden bed strictly north - south, so all plants will receive the same amount of sun. A trench 2 bayonets wide, a bayonet deep, is dug right in the sod, for reliability and moisture conservation, you can dig a roofing material or other along the edges similar material. Manure is laid at the bottom of the trench, ready-made compost is on top. Watering goes under the root, and water does not flow out of the garden. Plants are planted in two rows in a checkerboard pattern in a thickened pattern, they will all be extreme, get freedom and will develop perfectly. Landings are mulched with cut grass, sawdust, husks and therefore always remain wet. The width between the beds is from 60 to 100 cm. The inter-beds are periodically mowed and gradually turn into wonderful green paths. In the spring, such trenches look like this.

For humid northern areas, raised beds-boxes are suitable. A box is a stationary bed, fenced with boards made of boards, slate or other material, oriented strictly north-south.

The photo shows that as a result of this, the beds turned out to be non-perpendicular to the paths. The height of the bed is 15-20 cm, the width is half a meter, the spacing is from 60 to 100 cm. It is filled with compost. The bottom layer can be from semi-ripe manure or unripe compost, but on top you need to put a layer of ready-made humus, at least 6-7 cm.
We arranged boxes from boards 50 mm thick and 150 mm wide. The length in our case is 6 meters, but it can be any. The boards were impregnated with a bioprotective composition from Senezh, interconnected with the help of roofing corners.

The boxes were installed on top of the existing beds, that is, the bottom of the resulting box was already fertilized earlier, did not dig and had a good structure. In the case of organizing a narrow bed-box on "dead" soil, initial digging is necessary. Since autumn, the entire volume has been filled "with a slide" with last year's manure. The main thing is to fertilize and water the box enough. Then you can grow two or three crops in it. different vegetables, from early spring to late autumn. With the help of wire arches or a simple frame, the box easily turns into a greenhouse.
In the spring, such a raised bed warms up earlier. Plants sown before winter feel much better.

P.S. for Lyudmila (codling moth14)
At the end of May, a trench with planted peppers looks like this:

What are the advantages of narrow beds?

Narrow beds play an important role in organic farming. If you want to get a good and healthy crop without chemicals, then you need to know how to make narrow beds, as well as why they are effective. But first, let's figure out why it is worth abandoning wide beds.

Look at pictures 1 and 2. This shows wide and narrow vegetable beds. For greater clarity, I took the same area occupied by the site.

Along the edges of the beds, both narrow and wide, you can’t do without a path. I assumed that the track would be 40 centimeters wide. Oh yes. All dimensions in the drawings are in centimeters.

The area of one such track is 2 square meters with a 5-meter length of the beds (you can have it shorter or longer, and 5 meters is taken only for demonstration). Here you can safely walk, run, jump. Between the two wide beds laid another path. But what do we get? On a narrow bed, you can safely reach the middle, so the trampling zone there is only 10 square meters. Here we do not stand on the aisles, but only on the paths.

Another thing is a wide garden. She can only dream about it. On it, one might say, in general, the whole season is trampled. At least 3 times per season you will walk between rows. What is this walking. How much harm from her! Well, I'll tell you more from here.

Imagine you came to a wide garden and saw a ripe cucumber or tomato somewhere in the middle. What will you do? Of course, you will be on the garden!

But what to do when you need to pull out a weed that is about to give seeds, or suddenly it is time to spud potatoes? There is nothing else left but to stand on the bed. So I say that at least you will walk around the garden 3 times per season. But this is the minimum. In fact, there are usually more than three such walks.

What's the difference? Just think, a spine more, a spine less. Well, don't tell. Why, then, do the plants get sick and give a low yield? What little "mineral water" poured? No. This is due to the weakness of the plants, as they "survive" the breakage of small roots. Have you ever had a thin heel stepped on your almost bare foot on the subway or bus during rush hour? The plant experiences almost the same thing. To survive, it will survive, but it will “limp” and get sick. And in the end, it will also give a small harvest.

Remember that each step on the aisle is accompanied by:

a large number of dangling plant roots (you have already read about this);
compacted soil. In a compacted place, moisture evaporates very quickly from the ground;
broken stems and torn leaves of vegetables.

Narrow beds for vegetables are much more preferable than wide ones. You can also grow potatoes on them. Why not? You will see, potatoes in narrow beds will give a very good harvest. It is also easy and convenient to grow strawberries in such beds.

But the fact that they constantly trample on wide ridges does not at all contribute to a large harvest. Little of. The aisles of wide beds still need to be weeded, loosened, watered, and after they have been walked on, the soil needs to be loosened again. And so the whole season. The question is, why do extra work? You have nothing to do with time? It’s better to sit once again with your children or grandchildren, or just relax and look at the beauty around.

Sometimes gardeners use borders for beds, which improves functionality, since the earth does not crumble at the edges. There are other benefits of using garden fences, which you can read about here.

she looks prettier;
it is more pleasant to walk on it;
mowing lawn grass we get additional material for mulching.

What is the optimal bed width? Here, as they say, a matter of taste. Starting from 90 cm and up to 110 cm. The main criterion is the convenience of work. Narrow beds will be effective if you can reach the middle of them without standing on the bed itself. It is very convenient to process them with a Fokin flat cutter. The width of the path between the beds should be at least 40 cm, and if the garden is large, then you can make some paths 70 cm wide. It will be more convenient to move the wheelbarrow around the garden.

I hope I managed to convince you of the effectiveness of narrow beds, and if you yourself are already working on the same ones, then tell us about it. I am very interested to know your opinion too.

Narrow beds will provide easy work in the garden. If time, health and strength are precious to you, then make narrow beds for vegetables and you will see that most of the work will disappear by itself. Good luck!

I advise, dear readers, to receive fresh articles by e-mail. so as not to miss the publication of new materials on this blog.

FROM Best wishes, Gardensha

http://garden4u.ru

Back in the nineties of the last century, the most progressive gardeners began to arrange their beds according to the principle of Jacob Mittlider, an American farming expert. The method of "narrow beds" turned all gardening traditions literally upside down: still, if it involves reducing the area of the ridges themselves, and increasing the passages between them, on the contrary.

How can we expect an increase in yields?

It turns out that it is very possible! Now, in the era of popularity among summer residents of organic farming, few people use the Mittlider method in its pure form. But narrow beds to this day "work" in most bio-gardens for the benefit of the crop.

Why are narrow ridges so good compared to traditional ones? Let's try to understand the principles, features and advantages of narrow beds. What are they, narrow beds? Narrow beds are considered to be beds with a width of 30 to 90 centimeters of arbitrary length with obligatory wide passages between them.

At first glance, such a garden arrangement seems wasteful. usable area, but actually passes also have their own function. Yes and experience huge amount summer residents are convinced that a decrease in the area of \u200b\u200bridges on the size of the crop has a positive effect. This method takes not quantity, but quality!

General principles of functioning of a narrow bed

Why do vegetable and other crops grow and bear fruit better in a narrow garden? The fact is that, according to scientists, the soil provides food for plants only by 40%, and they get everything else from the air. Suddenly? But this is a fact. Pay attention to the outermost row of onions, carrots, radishes or parsley in your beds. There are always the largest and healthiest plants!

Think about the terrible soils that grow city grass and trees that no one has ever fed. What do they survive on?

Wide passages between narrow beds are designed to provide each plant with enough air (primarily carbon dioxide) necessary for growth and development. There is no middle ground on a narrow bed, since crops are planted in one row or, in extreme cases, in two rows in a checkerboard pattern. That is, each row will be "extreme" and will receive a maximum of light and air.

But do not forget that the passages must be either mulched or planted. lawn grass or siderates. Growing canopy or decaying organic matter between rows releases a large number of carbon dioxide, from which crops in the beds grow by leaps and bounds.

The device of narrow ridges

Organic narrow beds are arranged according to the principle of "warm beds".

That is, you will need boxes made of boards, slate or other material and plant waste of various "calibers", ranging from cardboard and paper to grass and foliage. Narrow beds are usually located from north to south on a flat horizontal surface area (so that water does not drain).

In the future, you can do two things:

Method 1. First, remove the sod, if any, and dig up the ground, adding humus, manure, compost and others to the ridge organic fertilizers. Enclose the bed with a box 25 centimeters high, and spread the turf between the rows. No more digging required. The fertility of the ridges is maintained by mulching and/or growing green manure.

Method 2. Those who do not want to dig even once, do otherwise. First, a box is knocked down from boards, logs or any other materials and placed on the ground. A layer of thick cardboard is laid at the bottom as an obstacle to perennial weeds and covered with sand. The second layer can be small branches, sunflower stalks, corn, straw, rotten apples, or kitchen waste. Then tops, foliage or mowed grass are laid. And finally, everything is sprinkled on top with a layer of earth or humus.

To speed up the work of microorganisms, it would be better to shed the bed with a solution of EM preparations, manure or herbal infusion. No matter how the bed is created, it is imperative to take care of wide aisles.

Most nice solution- plant the passages with lawn grass, which in the future will be mowed for mulch. But it is not forbidden to simply cover the aisles with sawdust or mulch with weeds. When the beds and passages are ready, you can safely exhale: now they will constantly serve faithfully in one place for several years.

Benefits of narrow beds

Some of the benefits of organic narrow beds echo " warm beds", which is not surprising: the bed is done once, but serves long years; no need to dig every year; the number of weeds and pests is sharply reduced; weeds are not pulled out by the roots, but are cut with a flat cutter, which is much faster and easier; seeds and seedlings can be planted earlier, the earth in such beds warms up faster; rains do not wash away the bed, due to the box, it retains moisture inside; it is convenient to observe crop rotation.

But a narrow garden bed also has its own unique advantages: plants in a narrow garden bed are equally well lit and get unlimited access to air; you don’t need to get up on narrow beds to get to a hard-to-reach vegetable from the “middle”, which means there will be no damage to the micro-roots that are located in surface layer soil; it is more convenient to process a narrow bed, it is more convenient to harvest from it - everything is in plain sight; landings on a narrow bed are not thickened (one or two rows), so each plant is better ventilated, which reduces the incidence; on a narrow bed it is easier to install arcs or other devices for temporary film shelter; with the “narrow ridges - wide aisles” system, you can forget about clods of dirt from the garden: grass or mulch in the aisles will ensure cleanliness and beauty.

If you are not afraid to experiment on your site and are open to everything new or well-forgotten old, next holiday season try organic narrow beds. We are sure you will appreciate their convenience and productivity.

We wish you success and great harvests!

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