There are many benefits to making things fit the length of your arm.
Laying out beds
‘No-dig' or ‘no-till' garden beds might as well be called ‘no-step' garden beds because one of the big benefits of the approach is the pleasure of working with loose, uncompacted soils. By not stepping on the beds, you don't compact the soil. This eliminates the need to de-compact it, eg tilling.
Other joys of working with friable soils include:
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improved drainage during wet times of the year;
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deeper root growth (drought-proofing); ■
easy weed management. The best width for a garden bed that's easy to work in comes down to the length of your arm. It's essential that you can easily reach halfway into each bed from the paths on both sides. In most cases this comes down to a simple equation: 1 arm length (for me, that's 60cm) x 2 = 1.2m.
We almost always plan our beds to be 1.2m wide (or slightly less) and have settled on an easy-to-build and rugged chicken tractor design of the same width. Although we primarily use the tractors to manage the grass around the garden beds, we also have the option of occasionally tractoring birds over the top from time to time if we need help with weeding.
Get the right tools for the job
Time and money are our most valuable assets. Weighing up how to spend them often comes down to opportunity cost – the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.
A good illustration is in your choice and use of tools. For example, I don't use (or own) a rotary hoe because I don't believe the opportunity costs stack up. Purchasing a rotary hoe requires significant cash upfront, ongoing running costs, a dry place to store it when not in use, and occasional maintenance or repair. Hiring one means the loss of at least a full day's work to get a trailer (if you don't own one), a drive to town and back, busting your ass for a couple of hours trying to get your money's worth out of the hire, then cleaning it, loading it back on the trailer, and driving to and from town again.
They also create a lot of noise and are sometimes difficult to handle when first working compacted soils. There's usually a few days needed to recover from sore muscles.
What I use to build a garden bed is a little different:
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sheets of heavy-duty black plastic;
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a DIY broad fork (see page 20);
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a garden fork;
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a rake;
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a pile of bricks;
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4-6 months.
STEP 2:
Soils in paddocks or backyards are likely to be compacted due to decades of stock or lawn mowing. They'll be wet in winter, dry in summer, and root growth will be stunted, which isn't ideal for a vegetable garden.
After removing the polythene, we use a broad fork to begin the process of loosening the soil. We work backward so we're not stepping on newly-worked ground, and fork it lengthwise, then width-wise.
The tines are forced into the ground as far as comfortable. The handle is then pulled back 45 degrees, which lifts the soil slightly and creates fissures.
While my DIY broad fork (pictured above) is great to work with, you could also use a garden fork.
Note: The bed in these photos (above, below, on page 21) is narrower than our usual 1.2m and used for demonstration purposes only.
STEP 4:
Step 3 is tedious. Step 4 is strenuous. It involves forming beds by either raking or shoveling soil from where the paths will be to where the beds will be. If the soil is moderately workable, I like to stand on one side of the bed and rake the soil up and toward me. I then go around and stand in the low path I've just formed and rake up the opposite path. Given the length of the rake and good technique, you can usually build a 120cm-wide bed with 30cm pathways in between.
However, if the soil is heavy or very damp on the day you've set aside to build beds, then you may need a shovel to dig the path one scoop at a time as you work forward. Either way, the overall result is a set of beds about 10-20cm higher than the paths.
Benefits include:
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adding topsoil to beds without importing it; ■
improving drainage;
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designated walking areas so the beds are truly ‘no-step';
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soil which warms up earlier in spring;
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soil that's easy to weed with a stirrup hoe.
CREATING COMPOST
We use a rough translation of the Berkeley 18-day Hot Compost Method, with three piles on the go at any time:
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one that we're adding to;
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one actively ‘cooking';
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one that we're using.
Turning a pile takes four minutes, two to three times a week with the right tools (a stiff rake and a manure shovel). A pitchfork is the wrong tool for turning compost.