One of our main goals this week is to get the garden beds behind the house and across the driveway ready for planting. We'll talk about the benefits of growing in raised beds and demonstrate a couple of different methods of creating and maintaining them.
Jean-Martin Fortier is a market gardener in Quebec. He and his wife Maude-Helene Desroches make a living growing on an acre and a half of permanent raised beds. Fortier's book "The Market Gardener" has become a popular guide for farmers wanting to grow organically and intensively on a small acreage without large equipment.
Here are a couple of video segments from a multi-part workshop in which Fortier talks about planning and maintaining his raised bed system:
The Market Gardener with Jean-Martin Fortier, Part 2 (18 min.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8ZsRbCnxM&list=PLCeA6DzL9P4uRadXW0_hj5Ct3EAqWH1zl&index=2
The Market Gardener with Jean-Martin Fortier, Part 6 (15 min.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnqBf6sf2x8&index=6&list=PLCeA6DzL9P4uRadXW0_hj5Ct3EAqWH1zl
Jean-Martin has some advantages over us. For one thing, the growing areas available to us don't lend themselves to standardization in length. The soil types are also so different in each that it is hard to set up his sort of systematic rotation system. Also, we don't as yet own a walking tractor (that may be our next big purchase). We do own a rototiller, but as you can see from Fortier's video, that's not a tool you want to overuse.
You probably don't own a walking tractor either, though, so this gives us an opportunity to show you how to use hand-powered tools to create and maintain garden beds. And then you can apply your new-found knowledge in the Hoben garden!
No comments:
Post a Comment