[AT] Old time gardens

[carl gogol]

I'm wondering if other raised bed gardeners made their gardens with 1' or 
more lift.

We had a few small raised beds at the last place we lived.  I didn't think 
that raising them 6" higher made it all that much easier to bend over and 
pull weeds.  The biggest advantage was that they were small, so there were 
fewer weeds to pull.  Our garden is now 100' X 100' with 8' high deer fence 
enclosing it.  We have fruit trees, and everything else we want to protect 
from the deer, inside it.  I even use it for giving my g'ment trees a few 
years of growth before they have to live out in the dangerous world.

I have been using the rototiller to do a lot of the soil preparation and 
have seen the texture / tilth of the garden's soil deteriorate in just 3 
years.  This fall, as the various areas of the garden have stopped producing 
I have been running a garden tractor with a small cultivator through the 
ground every time it is dry a few weeds pop up.  This has really done a nice 
job on getting rid of some weeds that just seem to multiply after getting 
cut up by the rototiller.  I have added some weight to the cultivator and 
now it is operating like a small field cultivator in busting up the soil and 
now the tilth seems to be getting back to where it was three years ago.  I 
know that two years ago I rototilled when it was a little too wet and 
everything just seemed to go down hill from there.  No amount of rototilling 
seemed to bring the texture back, but these cultivators seem to have done 
the job.  I am finding that this "bottom land" that hasn't been tilled for 
50 years is different soil than the heavy clays that I am used to.  At any 
rate, I am happy to see the soil respond to something.

When I operated the snapbean harvester - back in 1972, there was an ever 
replenishing supply of beans from about 700 acres of fields that would end 
up on the operator's platform of the IH 140.  They were the best beans I 
ever had and love them raw better than cooked even today.
Carl Gogol
Manlius, NY
(2) AC D-14, AC 914H
Simplicity 3112 & 7116
Kubota F-2400