Day 1 at The Farm - Bed Construction

March 17th, 2019

The image above shows the results of my first day’s work at my newly rented plot in the Regional Park. It demonstrates how I designed and built my growing beds. This is a simplified “lasagna method”, so-called because you build fertility by layering a variety of different materials on top of each other to feed the soil and your plants for years to come and it’s a great way to start raised beds at home.

I began by hiring someone to plow the quarter acre site because there was a massive tangle of woody roots from perennial shrubs, that made it difficult to work, but that’s the last time the soil will ever be disturbed and ideally it’s a step you would avoid if possible to prevent exposing the organic matter already buried deep in the soil.

After marking out my new beds with string, I first laid cardboard from old boxes on the ground, which I did primarily for weed suppression so I don’t have to spend ages hoeing my beds. Weeding, in addition to wasting time, also disturbs the soil, the shallow roots of crops and beneficial organisms near the surface that will help over time to incorporate the organic matter into the soil. Anything you can do to reduce disturbance is a big advantage. The cardboard itself also has a high carbon content and will very rapidly be decomposed and mixed into the soil by worms and other microorganisms, giving the soil a big organic matter boost within just a few months.

After the cardboard, I added about half an inch of composted horse manure from a local ranch, which is a great source of nitrogen, as well as a source of more of that organic matter that I want to lock away in the soil for as long as possible. In a more complex system of layered beds, before the manure, you might add grass clippings, or the kind of fresh food scraps that would normally go in the compost because these fresh materials will decompose over a period of several months feeding your plants slowly, but steadily for a long time. However, I didn’t have access to enough of these materials, so I had to skip this step.

After the manure, I added half an inch of compost from a local bulk supplier, which was made of plant material from a wide range of different sources, providing a more varied supply of nutrients than the manure.

Depending on where it comes from and how it’s made, compost comes with varying degrees of Nitrogen (N) content. You should usually be able to find this out from the supplier as most will have data sheets showing the results of various nutrient analyses of their product. The nitrogen content will determine how much you can add to your soil at one time, because too much N will burn the roots of your plants and can leach into the water table causing contamination of nearby groundwater.

As it turned out, my compost still had a very high N content when it arrived and the pile heated up to well over 140 degrees after it was delivered as a result of ongoing decomposition. In hindsight, the 1/2 inch I added to my beds was actually too much and did in fact damage the first few crops I planted. In the end, I had to let it rest for several weeks, watering it occasionally to aid in the breakdown and rinse out some of the Nitrogen. Of course, this wasn’t ideal, but it won’t have any detrimental long-term consequences and now the beds are established there should be nutrients enough for a long time to come, with small top-ups of 1/8th inch or so between plantings of subsequent crops.

As you can see from the photo, I used a wood chip mulch for my pathways, which came from a company doing pruning in the area and who were looking for somewhere free to dump the chipped waste. You can get this kind of material for free all over the state by signing up for a service like Chip Drop, or just by looking out for chipping trucks in your neighborhood and talking to the driver. The addition of this mulch to my paths will help to suppress weeds, but over time will also incorporate into the soil so that it’s not only my growing beds that are storing carbon, but the whole of my farm.