Grow a Sustainable Diet: Planning and Growing to Feed Ourselves and the Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

my paths. Recently I had an old cotton bedspread that, after forty years, had reached the end of its useful life in the house. I put that down in a path that I wouldn’t be digging up anytime soon and threw some leaves on top.

    Figure 2.2. Connecting 4 × 4 Beds
    If you happen to have a garden full of 4′ × 4′ beds, linking them together into longer beds could increase your production area by 20 percent, as shown in Figure 2.2 . Besides increasing the production area, having fewer paths results in less path maintenance. Grass paths are a possibility for the wider paths, but not the narrow ones. Maneuvering a mower in tight spaces might result in damage to your plants. Grass paths require mowing and you need to be careful not to blow grass onto your beds. You don’t want to be washing grass off your harvested vegetables. Bagging the grass when you mow these paths gives you mulch or compost material.
    My large garden is divided into four sections of nine beds each, with 18″ paths between the beds. This is the garden you see in my DVD Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden . There is nothing magical about having nine beds in a row that I know of. That’s just what fits into my available space and it works well for me. The sections are divided by 4′ wide grass paths that I mow with a push mower, bagging the grass. When I originally planned out that garden, I imagined I would just zip through there on the riding mower, which I did in the early years. That was before the garden fence went up. As the plantings got more intense there was no room for the riding mower, which was okay because I couldn’t bag the grass with that mower anyway. The wide paths, in addition to providing more work space and easy access between sections, are now part of my plan to supply mulch in the form of grass clippings to some of my beds.

    Figure 2.3. Large Garden
    Fall is the time at my place to redefine the bed edges, if necessary. As I harvest the last of the summer crops and plant the cover crops, I dig out the narrow paths if they’ve been mulched or if the white clover has died back, and toss that rich soil onto the beds. Doing this defines the path and enriches the bed. I either broadcast white clover again in the path or mulch with leaves. If you are starting a new garden, dig out the paths. That sod you remove will go to your new compost pile. Any extra soil you dig from the paths can go to build up your new beds. If it is clay that you are digging up, add it to the compost, rather than toyour bed. Clay holds a lot of nutrients that can become available in the composting process.
    On your garden map identify each bed with a number or letter, or both. In my garden the four main sections are designated as A, B, C, and D, plus an additional section (E) of smaller beds for perennials. The nine beds in each section are identified as A1, A2, A3, etc. Farmers make similar maps, but instead of beds they have fields, with names to identify them.
    If you anticipate predators you may want to plan for a fence. I’ll address fences in Chapter 12 . My large garden has a good fence now, but it had none when I started out. Even without a fence, you can establish a border. A border defines your space and could be an area surrounding your garden, planted to annual or perennial plants that will enhance your ecosystem, attracting beneficial insects that keep the harmful ones in balance. More about that in Chapter 6 . A border could be allowed to develop into more of a hedge, planted to one or more types of bushes or small trees. A hedge is something to keep in mind for the future as you plan your space. The height of a hedge needs to be considered so it doesn’t shade your vegetable beds. As you can see on the map ( Figure 2.3 ), I have a hazelnut hedge planted on the north side of my garden.
    I run my garden beds east to west. In my large garden, each bed is 4′ × 20′. In 1985 I began with 12 beds, each 5′ × 20′ and planted in pairs.