narrow beds

[bikermike]

Following on from someone posting on here about narrow beds that are widened each year, I have decided to try my own version.

What I have done is cut the turf out of my new plot about two spade's widths wide. The eventual bed should be 1.6m across (from memory). I have turned the turf upside down and put some soil on top. When I plant my spuds, the plan is to use something to cut through the turf remnants, and put them in below that.

Hopefully, they will break up the soil, and then I can widen the beds and add more top-dressing to them.

The soil should be pretty fertile, it's had at least 2 years off, and was well used before that.

I will try to remember to come back and report on success or otherwise.

[Snoop Puss]

Sounds like a plan. Bet your potatoes enjoy the conditions. Good luck.

[bikermike]

as a subsidiary to that idea, I have a lot of bits of turf from digging out a ditch, I have put that upside down on the location of the next bed to see how that works. (I hope to enclose it and top it up with compost/soil/something)

[Thelma Sanders]

Sounds a bit like lazy beds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMnJoV2WWmc

[bikermike]

then these are "even lazier beds"

Indeed, there are a lot of different versions of this sort of thing. The novelty here (for me - and it's not even truly novel as I am copying something someone on here talked about), is the narrowness. The theory being that as I don't generate enough compost each year to make full-width beds, it's a way of building them slowly, and getting max bang for my compost buck...