Raised beds? Compost?

Here is my set up:
60x62
5-10° slope
I'm planning 28 rows, but due to obstruction, one side is 30 rows and the other is 26.
From side to side, 4' of root plants (carrots, beets, turnips, radishes), 25' of my crop plants (14 varieties), 4' walkway, 25' crops, 4' roots. Rows running across the slope. Rows are 2' on center.
I recently started volunteering at a barn, and they pay me in horse crap. (The pay is absolutely horse s$!#)
I have an area set aside to dump the manure once the plants have started.
I'm having trouble with drainage (usually around this time of year, but will be bone dry in June) The soil is Eastern North Carolina sandy clay, and by tilling in compost and grass clippings it has gotten a lot better. Could I built a bed maker for my tiller, and compost between the rows to help build the soil? Would it have any repercussions?

Hi John, interesting question.

The horse manure can be garden gold so good work there.  Personally I am not a fan of tillage unless it is done just once to prep the soil, but even then, a tiller does surprisingly high damage to soil that lasts much longer than one would think.  As you have sandy soil, could you instead use a broadfork?  It’s certainly not a requirement, but can be a useful option.  And please, I am not criticizing as I used a tiller to break up my heavy clay.

Ok, with all that being said, your 60x60ish garden bed is an impressive endeavor.  Were you planning on raising the entire 60x60 area or making raised beds within the 60x60 area?  Either way can work, but personally I have raised beds no longer than 8’ wide, about the maximum I can reach (long arms).  If you take the several long but narrow beds, I would pile in all the composted manure and use that.  But don’t re-till each year.  Tillage goes a long ways towards making good soil bad.  Instead, use a fork and loosen or plant some annual cover crop that will help build your soil.  

If you are trying to use a bed shaper to make beds and compost between them, oddly the best soil will be in between the beds.  Again, if it were me I would add that compost right on the row.

I am not certain I read your question as you intended so my answer was based on my understanding.  If this makes no sense, maybe you could give me some more information and I can address that.

Looking forward to your response!

Eric

I just realized I missed one portion of your question.  My apologies.  

Getting deep soil is probably the solution to both drainage and dryness.  Your compost incorporation is a good start.  Cover crops can really drill down and help drainage even more and access moisture in the summer.  The raised bed should do wonders for drainage as well.

Something else you could do for moisture retention is add some type of mulch.  Straw is good but my personal preference is wood chips which I eventually decompose using Wine Cap mushrooms (if you want more on this, I can help there).  Mulches also help control weeds.

I am still not certain how a bed shaper works into all of this, but it becomes a discussion well worth having.

Eric

Hi John,
That sounds like a great garden. I think you are on track to making the soil better. The organic matter in the compost provide a buffer for the water. When its wet, the organic matter soaks up the water to keep plant roots from drowning, and when it is dry, it releases the water back out to keep things moist. I second the suggestion of some previously living material as compost (straw, woodchips, etc). That will do wonders for your moisture levels. I applied 4-5 inches of woodchips on my new garden 2 years ago. After 2 months, where I had not put the woodchips, I couldn't get my finger into the ground without digging, it was so hard packed. Dry as a bone. Under the woodchips, my finger slipped easily into the dirt up to my knuckle and probably would have kept going if my knuckle hadn't been in the way :)

As for raising the beds a bit with a machine and the putting horse manure in the paths, I think it would work fine and would improve your soil. I do wonder about smaller plants in the middle of the rows not being able to reach the nutrients as well. I would also have some concern about weeds growing from the manure if it was not covered well.

If you were to compost the horse manure somewhere else first, and get it hot enough to kill weed seeds, and then spread it on the rows themselves, I think there might be slightly more benefit, slightly faster. Is it worth the extra work? I don't know. I'm a bit of a purist and perfectionist when it comes to my garden, but I encourage people NOT to follow me in that :) Try it out and see how it goes. Soil building is often slow, but well worth it. Let us know your results.

Eric,
Yea, I was going to do the bed shaping stuff. And at this point, I am still tilling my garden because I keep expanding and I hit clay dense areas and I try to mix it in and spread it out as much as  possible. Ideally, I could do bed shaping, alternating where the beds go, putting the row over the furrow from the year prior.
As far as mulching it, I was thinking of doing an untreated mulch over the compost, and I could LIGHTLY till compost and mulch together prior to shaping next year, and repeat. I feel like it would be a good way to improve the drainage between rows while over time, adding to the soil.
I do plan on laying an inch or two of manure over the whole area at the end of the season and then planting clover.
I regraded my yard this year, so I was able to compost most of the grass and use most of the top soil, I also planted fescue, so I'm the only one in town that needs to mow his grass. That gives me a little bit of play room with compost and taking care of my lawns soil.

Great that you have all that compost!  I understand why you want to access that clay.  Maybe you can get things up and running and everything will get nice and fertile.

I have some pictures of my own raised bed in this thread HERE:

https://permies.com/t/82798/composting/composting-wood-chips-chicken-litter

In my case I ended up turning a bunch of woodchips into garden bedding/soil.  This worked very well for me.  I am not trying to make you do anything, but the thread details how I got into making raised beds—partially because my heavy clay soil does not drain so well either.  The wood chips drain far better than my old clay bed ever did.  If you are so interested, this becomes very fertile soil.  But your horse manure will doubtless be extremely fertile also.  My suggestion would be to foster soil microbes (and earthworms!) as I have found that biology trumps chemistry in regards to soil fertility.

You have a tea interesting project ahead and I would love to know how things work out.

Keep us posted,

Eric

Matt,
Sorry I missed your reply, I was walking around Walmart with my wife and kids.
Yea, so I'm trying to keep plants only on the rows. 10/14 of my crop plants are getting support structures, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc., so I'll still need to be able to walk through the rows without trampling anything. I have set aside an area for beehives, which I will be filling with wildflowers and other "pretty" plants for my daughters.
I was thinking of something like this: /T\_/T\_/T\=/T\=/T\ with the first half being empty furrows and the second half being compost topped with mulch. With any luck, I could try to mulch around the plants in the rows, which is what I plan on trying to do around the root crops on the ends, but I concerned about mold or bugs using it to hide from me. I do have rabbits and other small annoyances in my area, but I am fine with them and plant extra for them. Birds are my only real problem, but the majority of my plants I will be starting from seed in a hoop house and will transfer them over. (starter's total 1692 plants, and direct sow totals 6688 for the year, across my own and my wife's kitchen garden).
I'd be more than happy to send my spreadsheets to anyone who is willing to look at it and offer any advice.
I also could use some suggestions about how high & wide I should try to make the sides & top of my bed maker. I have 10" wide boards on hand. I was thinking, (24" on center) rows could be 12" wide or 6" wide. I think if I did 6", it would allow the roots of the plants to be closer to the compost in the furrows, as well as allow me more walking room. Thoughts?

Eric,
I looked through your thread. it reminds me about Jean Pain, the French guy from the 70's that used woodchip compost to heat his house and stuff. I agree that woodchips would be nice, but unfortunately, I'm going to have to buy them, as I don't own a chipper, but I am concerned with having the mushrooms. I have a 1, 3, and 7yo. the only one we don't have to worry about picking them up is the 7yo (I think it would just be easier to teach them all mushrooms are bad, for their safety, until they are old enough to know the difference).  When I cleared the areas of my yard for gardening, I used all the brush to build a berm against the creek side to prevent the trash from upstream from filling up my yard. that was almost 2 years ago, so the brush is breaking down pretty well, but I want to plant raz and blackberry bushes on it to create a stronger natural fence line, so I don't want to disturb it.

Hi John,
I'd love to see your spreadsheet. Maybe we can trade, I can show you what I do for my planning. I don't think mine is all that extensive, but I think its good to see what other people do. Maybe I can pick up an idea or two from your planning. I don't have access to it from work, but I will see if I can attach it later.

I wouldn't worry too much about mold. It can happen, but in my experience some sort of mushroom moves in quickly and dominates the landscape. I have had a few issues with slugs hiding in the woodchips, but its not too ridiculous for me. I expect things will even out, but I had to move a couple years ago and restart my gardens from scratch, so I cannot say definitely from experience. Some other areas have so many problems with slugs that it never balances back out with predators and they use other kinds of mulch instead.

I think I would suggest a larger sized bed with smaller paths. This allows you to be more efficient with space. You can fit plants into a smaller area by grouping them together with fewer paths. This also means a smaller area to weed and water... and maybe room for even more plants. Although you seem like you are already planning for a massive garden. As for the sizing, I divide my garden into 4ft wide strips. <----------- 30" bed -----------><--18" path--> The 30" wide bed seems fairly standard for home and market garden sized operations due to the number of people who recommend it and the number of tools designed for that size bed. The 18" path was a mixture of the fact that I wanted to fit a lot in a small space, combined with the fact that I am not the skinniest person, I have kids who help me, my beds overflow into the path, and it gives me a good round number when I'm planning things. In other words, just because :)

I don't know if you are doing this garden as a job or if it will be on the side, but either way, don't give up if you get behind on things. It can be depressing when you forget something for a week or two, and then all of a sudden the weeds are taller than what you are trying to grow. Just keep going :) If needed, there are many posts here around being efficient in the garden.

Hi John,

I understand how seemingly everything goes into a child’s mouth and the more inappropriate the more likely.  GRRR.  My kids are well past that age (high school and college).  So I don’t blame you one bit for your kids sake.  

Wine Caps are pretty hard to confuse for another variety—they get HUGE.  And my Wine Caps are really for composting 1st, eating 2nd.

But you have the young kids so do whatever it takes to keep them safe.  I totally understand that safety concern.

Eric

I've attached my Master Spreadsheet. and the other is a map layout of for my large garden. I've also got an area set aside for corn, potatoes, onions/garlic/beets, (and then my wife's garden... which is just alot of work for me, but I do it for her anyways.

.xlsx is not allowed.

Heres a link:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkX2KzNbMDi7b5zuMKyrbCLPp24

Or I can email it to you directly. the master sheet is close to 2 mb.

Hi John,
The link does not seem to work for me. I don't know if I am supposed to say this, but it does the forum does allow .csv uploads. If you change the extension of the file to .csv instead of .xlsx, it should let you upload it. Then I can change the extension back when I get it on my end. Just a thought. The computer will complain, and it won't work if people don't change the extension back after they download it.  

I emailed it to you. I tried very hard to make it (2022 plant status-working(the"master sheet")) as user friendly as possible. To include projected dates and allow for a 70% germination rate (I know it's low but this is the first year I'm trying to do it by numbers, so I'm tracking all that stuff.
The idea of possibly starting a non profit for veterans is there. I'd like to buy property to farm like 1-3 acres and do it like that.

Ok. I had a thought.
Since I still haven't built the bed maker for the walk behind tiller yet...
If instead of doing a V shaped one, what if I inverted it? so if a normal bed maker looks like: \_/ , I made mine to look like: _/\_ I would be making a plow basically, but have flat bottoms and 90-degree sides, but it would allow me to run the tiller through midseason, pushing all the compost from between the rows up around the plants. This way, I would only be pulling a 6-12" item through the soil instead of a 24" item. I wouldn't be able to smooth the top, unless I added an extra board that extended out wider, but once the plants are in, I couldn't use that anyways.


  Tiller dirt flap
wwwwwwwwwwww
             /\    
           // \\
        ======
       //          \\

Thoughts?
It should present with less soil disturbance and be a bit easier to use. Especially since I have to aerate the compost anyways.