Sunday, June 21, 2015

Garden Bed FarmVid

After moving compost and manure for yet another double reach bed I decided that taking a walk to appreciate the work done past and present was a good idea.  Sharing seemed like a good idea too.



With appearances by:
Porkchop & Tenderloin

You will be able to see quite clearly that our beds are not straight.  This is intentional, the shape of the hill is not straight and it makes much more sense to follow the lay of the land than taking out a carpenter's square and trying to impose straight lines and angles on the landscape. (continued)


Highest up the hill is a swale ditch and berm.  This ditch runs dead level all the way along the hill you can see from my initial shot in the video. The subsequent beds are not measured to be dead level nor are the footpaths between them but because they follow the swale we installed first they are not far off in most places.

Mrs. Farmer and I were actually discussing today what a big impact this relatively minor design choice has had. The "grass" (and other volunteers, of course) in the pathways has grown much more than the grass elsewhere in the yard. It only came up because I was once again taking out the mower to do the paths for what is probably the 4th or 5th time this year.  The rest of the yard in comparison has yet to get high enough (which admittedly for me is quite high but I digress) to be mowed even once so far.

Seeing the same amount of water, the same amount of fertility, the same sun exposure and plant mix, really the same conditions across the property exhibit such different levels of performance is quite inspiring and certainly makes all of the work we've done laying things out this way worthwhile.

Thanks for stopping by.

4 comments:

  1. Swales? I want Swales. No wait,forget Swales, I want BACON on my plate.

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    1. I agree. Bacon tastes MUCH better than swales.

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  2. The farm looks most wonderful, Leos!

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    1. It's even worse after all the rain we've been getting over the last few days >.<

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