narrow paths vs wide beds

[littleminnie]

I put this post on all my gardening forums in case someone wants to know or use the info.
I am teaching some gardening classes. One thing I always stress is that a normal in the ground rectangular garden will produce much more when planted as beds rather than rows with a path on each side.
I made a drawing yesterday at lunchbreak of the same garden grown in each way. I figured out what the normal gardener would plant as rows in that amount of space and how it would be spaced. I didn't put all that on the drawing (I am not in math class and am not showing my work LOL). Then below it I figured out mathematically what could be planted in the same space in beds 3-4 feet wide. I could take a lot more time to make it super accurate, but I believe it is close. I think you could fit even more into the bedded garden than I have cited.


Plus when you just compost/manure, till, weed, mulch etc your beds rather than the whole garden, you save time and have a much better situation! So if you normally put down some compost/manure on your big rectangle and till the whole thing and then make narrow rows and weed the whole thing and water the whole thing- you are wasting everything! Try putting the compost/manure on 'beds' and tilling only them and then putting something like weed blocker fabric or cardboard and straw on the paths and then don't touch them again. Try setting up drip irrigation or soaker hoses on the beds only and not water the paths- if possible. i guarantee you will never go back to narrow rows!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I dislike beds because:

I feel like they crowd vegetables, and crowded vegetables don't grow well, and don't get sufficient water, or nutrients, or sunshine. The amount of sunshine falling on a square yard of my garden is constant whether I put one tomato plant in it or two. (I would take up more than half of the garden in the graphic just to plant one row of cucumbers and one row of tomatoes...)

For me, beds cause too much work to prepare the garden: fussing with this little bed, and that little bed, and the next little bed. It's much easier for me to start at one end of the garden and till to the other. (I can use a tractor to till a row-cropped field.)

I find pathways left in bedded gardens are a constant source of weed roots, and materials put down to block weeds just make the situation worse because the weeds grow anyway and then I can't weed properly because the weed blocker interferes.

It is vastly easier for me to weed a row than to weed a bed, (especially with modern weeders).

I find it easier to plant a row than to plant a bed, (especially with modern seeders).

I believe that the roots from row planted crops expand underground to make use of all available moisture and nutrients.

I would have to stop farming if I tried planting my field in beds. I wouldn't be able to keep up with the labor. I believe that a 10% increase in yield per square foot is not worth a 5X increase in labor.

In any case, I am skeptical that the highly concentrated and inexpensive nutrients that are the hallmark of bed-planting techniques will be readily available in the future. Better in my mind to adapt a planting technique that is sustainable, and that has passed the test of time.

There are other purposes for gardening than just raising the most amount of food with the least amount of labor. There are spiritual reasons, excuses to exercise, beautification, something useful to do, spending time with the kids, etc. Growing in beds serves all of these purposes well.

[littleminnie]

Joseph I think your reply is kind of weird in places. But being you farm more than garden, if you get my meaning, of course rows work better for you. That is why farmers plant in rows. However there are several market gardeners I know online that use beds in their large (over 1 acre) fields and love them.
When you have extensive space it doesn't matter how much you use. For a smaller gardener with a home garden, you cannot beat wide rows.
When you talk about rows vs beds, the spacing between vegetables does not have to change, as you say it does. For my graphic, I computed the same space between plants- such as tomatoes having 3 feet between and so on. The difference is whether there is a path on each side of each row or just a path on each side of a bed.
As for planting rows vs beds- you can still use a seeder in a bed and just put a bunch of rows parallel to each other. again, instead of having a path on each side of a carrot row, put a bunch of carrot rows together to about 3' wide and then have a path. That is what I am talking about.
I don't have too much problem with mulched paths growing superweeds. I use plastic or fabric on some and cardboard with straw on others and this saves me tons of time over actualy having to weed by hoe or tiller in each path around a row.
So to sum up, wide beds make tons of sense in a garden, but farmers can continue their rows in their fields.

[robertb]

I use bed planting; I don't see the point of paths between every row. It would be OK if I was using a mechanical hoe of some sort, but I don't have enough ground to make it worthwhile. I mulch with autumn leaves and grass cuttings, which are delivered to the site by a local garden contractor. I don't see those disappearing.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I regularly plant 3 or 4 rows of peas or onions side-by-side spacing the rows a foot apart. But I don't call that a bed, and there isn't anything permanent about it. It's here today, it'll be gone in 3 months when the peas are harvested.

And in any case, there are only so many watts of sunlight per square meter, and so many ppm of nutrients in the soil, and putting 2X or 6X more plants into the same space doesn't result in a 2X or 6X increase in yield. (I think the research shows that intensive planting densities in highly enriched soil only increase yields per square foot by around 10%.)

In my garden each corn plant receives approximately 2.5 square feet of space in which to grow. The diagram of a bed garden is allocating 0.4 square feet per corn plant (including to the middle of the path), so that's a planting density 6X what I am able to grow in my garden. I'm very skeptical about those kind of planting densities.

My brother who plants corn in beds allocates 2.25 square feet per corn plant.

[littleminnie]

I don't use intensive methods either but find in certain spacing methods that a lot can be fitted in without reducing the space it grows in. I did grow corn last year in blocks of four rows just under a foot apart. I don't think I calculated the amount of corn right. I think I mixed it up mathematically when at work. However you still can grow twice as much by not having a path on each side of each row. You can reach in to the middle just fine I found last year by doing 4 rows in a block.

I increase my amount of plants by doing staggered rows in a bed for stuff like brassicas, peppers and onions. They get more space than catalogs will tell you they need but you can fit more into the length of row! I was just doing some drawings of this today. Potatoes I do in a double row but that gives them still just as much room per plant you just have 1 path for 2 plants rather than 1. However, again I think this all works better for smaller growers than large fields.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

If I planted corn in rows that were a foot apart, I would space the seeds 2.5 feet apart in the rows.... My brother plants corn on 18" centers. We get around two ears of corn per plant. If we planted closer we would expect to get one ear per plant. I'd rather keep seed costs lower by planting fewer plants that produce more per plant.

[mnjrutherford]

The spacing issues are really kinda interesting. We are hoping to use a LOT of wheat straw mulch this year. I think our soil is improving in general and the straw should facilitate the improvement rate. But, this year, I hope to kill out some more lawn and maybe merge a couple or three of our little 35' x 40' plots into longer/larger planting areas.

[robertb]

I'm also sceptical about planting densities. One book recommends planting the smaller corn varieties eight inches apart. I've been planting them eighteen inches apart and underplanting, though I do wonder whether going down to a foot would work. I wouldn't grow the bigger varieties as I wouldn't feel confident about getting a crop.

[bertiefox]

I think beds are far superior if you are a leisure gardener rather than a farmer. I can see rows are much more practical if you have fields full of crops and need to use mechanised weeders and cultivators. But I found rows impossible to keep weeded here and it was endless work. I tried deep mulch which was ok for some crops, but useless for sowing small seeds. I've found the best system I've ever used a four metre by one metre bed surrounded by boards, with a two foot path. The paths I keep covered in leylandi hedge clippings or any other rough organic material I can find, and I plant everything in the beds in square foot fashion. I never believed the spacings were adequate, but the answer is plenty of organic material and above all lots of water. I grew the largest cauliflowers and red cabbages I've ever grown in the one foot squares last year. I DO take a lot of time with soil preparation, with four or five handfuls of compost, five of vermiculite to open up our heavy clay soil (one application in the first year) and a couple of handfuls of wood ashes. I also sprinkle some organic fertiliser on top before I plant or sow the crops. I'm just clearing the beds and transplanting some early turnips and greens, and I must admit it's been easier than ever in getting things ship shape for the new year.