Failure is Not an Option
What some might call laziness, other might call common sense. The problem is when it comes to matters of gardening, sense isn’t common. Long before our eventual move to Tennessee, Amy and I had become interested in what some might call “alternative” agriculture methods. Perhaps you’ve heard of the no-till approach to farming? I can’t honestly speak to the degree of popularity or scorn for such methods, but I can tell you that our experience with it has been nothing but positive. We started with two rather small raised beds in our tiny backyard in Oklahoma. We paid for “garden-ready” soil from a local supplier in OKC. Our results? Very high yield, almost non-existent weeds, and lower water usage. The lack of weeds alone was enough to peak my interest.
But this blog post isn’t about the science of soil and how to grow enough food to feed a family of 4 with just 120 square feet of garden space. If you’re interested in no-till I welcome you to do your research. I can’t speak as an authority on it because I just don’t have enough experience with it yet to reasonably consider myself knowledgeable.
Instead, I simply want to highlight the challenges we’ve had in Tennessee with this and how we’ve had to adapt over the past four years.
The farm we bought had ample space for a ridiculously large garden area. In our first two years, our attempt at no-till gardening failed miserably. We grew our starts from seed and planted what I would estimate to be maybe as many as 60 tomato plants. Our yield? Dismal. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again as they say.
Eventually I decided to dig a little deeper to understand why did we have so much good come from our no-till experience in Oklahoma and such rotten results in Tennessee. A major difference I found was compaction. Obviously, with new soil in a raised bed, that soil had never been compacted and it allowed for good soil aeration and provided a healthy thriving environment for the microorganisms that are essential for good soil health. I say obviously but it took me a minute to put two and two together. (It’s still four by the way.)
I bought a penetrometer and quickly found that I hit hard pan at about 3 inches deep. Next, I borrowed a roto-tiller attachment for my tractor from a neighbor and worked that area over as best I could. In some, maybe most, areas I got fairly decent tillage. Yes, I tilled a garden intended to be no-till garden. Basically I had to start over. But fast forward a year or so and we were still fighting a number of problems that was making growing a large, low maintenance garden anything but low maintenance. We still struggled with a lot of weeds and freaking bermuda grass!
We pivoted yet again and bought some cheap raised bed kits off of Vevor. Fancy way of saying some corrugated aluminum siding that they pre-drilled and provided the nuts and bolts to put it all together. If you’re asking yourself, “self, could I just build that myself?” the answer is absolutely yes you could. But I bought mine for this first go round so that I could get it done. We also paid for some more “garden ready” soil from a place down the street. Our results have been much better, achieving a fairly good harvest last year with a very low amount of weeds to contend with. Now to figure out the chicken dynamic!!
One thing I wanted to highlight in this post though is our plan going forward with raised beds. I found a guy on Youtube that has done extensive work and testing with raised beds using molds to create concrete sides. It started as a homemade wooden mold and has now morphed to hardened plastic trays that you can buy. I never did anything with the wooden versions and opted instead for the plastic ones when I saw that he went to market with those. He offers very good videos on his process and instructions for making these yourselves. Initially, I bought 2 of the 24” molds and 2 of the 36” molds.
It takes a little bit of work, but I also have a concrete mixer making the really hard part not so hard. So far, I’ve made I think 6, maybe 8, sides of each size. I still need to apply sealer to them but I think this is the path forward for us. We get raised beds that are much more durable than any wooden sides you might use otherwise and their interlocking so you can create beds of different sizes, stack sides to get different depths, etc. Add in good soil and we have a recipe for low maintenance, weed-free garden beds that produce delicious veggies for a long time.
Once I’ve got these installed I’ll add some pics to this post, but in the meantime…
If you’re interested in learning more about the molds you can do so by checking out his Youtube site at MAN about TOOLS - YouTube or his website Gardening, Woodworking, Concrete Molds, Timber Frame, Aircrete | MAN About TOOLS. I am not affiliated with this in any way. I just happen to like what he’s done here and wanted to share it with you.