Garden beds with Structural components
Table of Contents
Garden beds with structural components, involve a building process before the grow medium and plants can be put in place. A containment need to be built and we are left with an empty shell. Having the shell in place, we still have to decide for how we fill it. Our growing method chosen, wich more or less demands the fertilizer used to feed the plants in the long run is creating the filling to for the ideal environment so healthy soil biota can arise.
Terraced garden beds
Garden Terraces are ideal to cascade down a hill and give the water barrier so seep into, instead of just running down the hill pooling in the low spots, potentially creating flood potential. It also gives roots more surface to take hold keeping the landscape from eroding and causing landslides. Garden terraces also keep lot of room for detailed design features and material choices to implement, to make the daily walk up or down hill a pleasurable one.
Contoured rows
Depending on the slope of the location, where it is too steep for terraced beds to be installed or too large of an area to build out of wood and lumber, contoured rows area great option to keep the land from eroding as being able to guide the waterflow. Setting rows up alternatingly off set on the outer edges, we can manipulate the water run off to zig zag down the hill, and as such watering each row from the ground up on the way down. Contoured rows when large enough in size also function as windbreaks, giving low wind pockets for less hardy plants to find a spot. They are fairly easy to build by mounting up rows of grow medium or can be very elaborate made of lumber, cut trees stone walls or with paver features. Rows come in handy in any landscape, especially when the plan is to grow lots of produce and have multiple seasonal crop turn overs.
Raised garden beds
At the end of a slop where the ground flattens or on general flat grounds around your house, raised beds are a good option to contain growing areas in an organized way. Raised beds have the benefit of playing into the workflow of our garden, helping with less back bending work and rather having our veggies grow on a workable height. There is no limit to form, size, shape or options, it is the materials used and precautions taken that make a raised bed a healthy option to grow in. When building a raised bed or any other garden bed structure, we need to avoid treated lumber. It may rot away less quick, but we are at risk taking in chemicals, that have seeped into the ground around and directly into our beds. Using natural or untreated lumber, we have to take precautions to line the inside walls of the raised be with a water barrier to avoid accelerating the decay of our wooden shell. Not so much to worry though, if we build it out of pavers or stone elements.
Keyhole garden
A Key hole garden is a raised bed or Huegelkultur, ideally in circular shape, containing a in-ground composter inside the grow bed with a narrow access path way into the center of the garden bed,, hence keyhole garden. Having the decomposition happen in the center of the garden bed, will naturally distribute the decomposing nutrients over time and by activity of the soil biota throughout the garden bed, ensuring active continuous soil building with in the garden bed.
Cold Frames
Cold frames are small boxes, mostly covered with old windows or a glass tops, built alongside the house or another building structure to gain thermal radiant energy from the house itself. They are used to start seedling earlier and be able to contain them in a small green house. The glass cover is removable when the sun gets stronger, so the plants can stay in place for the season and trellised along the house, if you choose so.
Container gardens
Growing in containers is one of the easiest grow methods. We only need to fill up a container and ensure we have drainage for excess water to go to. A great variety of grow media can be used but, depending on container size, need annual or seasonal addition in nutrient supply. Container gardens are great solutions for small space and balconies.
Bottle gardens
A great way to recycle plastic bottles is the reuse in a bottle garden. Bottles are turned upside down, a hole is drilled into the top and the bottom,so water can flow through, The bottles are hung above each other so that the bottle above provides water through its run off to the next bottle below. Every bottle in the system gets a cutout on the side of the bottle to place grow medium and plants inside. Bottle garden make great additions in windows or on the side of a house, on a trellis or anywhere you want to imagine it.
Garden beds made of grow medium itself
When choosing a grow medium it comes down to sustainability. The use of petroleum derived fertilizers will unavoidable end up in salt build up in the soil creating osmotic imbalance. Osmosis, the exchange of water and nutrients in the root zone, is greatly influenced by the salt content of our soil. Too much salt inhibits liquids to be absorbed into the roots vascular system and causes reverse osmosis where it pulls liquid out of the plant causing it to die. Naturally based garden beds depend on the different cycle nature is providing, creating symbiosis that is otherwise disrupted by none organic toxins, as in fertilizers produced by big agriculture and its supporting industries.
Looking at nature we see that decay is the driving force to free up nutrients out of organic matter, that either falls to the ground, dies off or we throw away. Any system needs a driver to guide the energy produced and exhausted. The driver for natural decay lays in the micro-life nature provides for us. Fungi, bacteria, yeasts, insects and protozoa are the major driver resulting in healthy soil biota. They can be friend or enemy, depending on the microclimate we provide for them. It is upon us to create a microclimate that attracts the right microorganisms. The interaction of water and organic matter drives osmosis and the uptake of nutrients. The water running through decaying matter absorbs lots of the available nutrients and can be fed to the plant in water based and soil less grow medias.
Building the soil matter, we need carbon and nitrogen, the main drivers for microbial, bacterial and fungal activity. Ideal miro-life supported decay, releases Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Zink to the crops when it finds a 24:1 ratio of Carbon to Nitrogen. Carbon is everything brown and black to simplify the matter, such as wood, cardboard/paper or burlap/fibers. The darker the matter the higher the carbon content with charcoal being 100% carbon. Everything green, new growth tissue based contains nitrogen, the greener and lusher or colorful the more nitrogen the tissue contains, as in grass clippings, cut shrubs and pruning debris, or vegetable food scraps or animal manure. Nitrogen is providing carbohydrates and proteins to the micro-life but it has to be in the right ratio otherwise they feast themselves to death or are eaten by predators because they are so nicely saturated with nutrients. Nitrogen decays faster than carbon and as such the ratio is always fluctuating till it reaches the humus stage where the balance stabilizes and is most easily available to the plants root zone for nutrient uptake.
To achieve this ratio we have the option of layering and piling materials, no-till or of tilled soil where you work the ratio back into the ground over time. Tilling is a continuous hard undertaking, needing machinery and consistent labor over and over again. It can disrupt the soil life and it may be hard to find the correct ratio the ground actually needs without them means of testing the soil properly.
The easy way out, are your no till options, which are essentially carbon in form of woods in different types and sizes as well as cardboard/paper, and greens/scraps layered upon each other. Over time seasoning and natural decay will create the right grow environment for out plants to establish long-term health.
For an immediate planting season we have to top it all off with healthy dark rich soil with lots of humus for the plants to thrive the same season.
Lasagna garden
The easiest way to recycle lawn clippings, food scraps (no fats, meat and bones), pruning debris and cardboard/paper waste, is by layering these common recourses. As such we can give back to the earth, while we see the energy arise back in form of new food instead of going to the city provided garbage system. Safe money on your green bin as well as on your blue one! There is no limit to the form and shape of a lasagna garden and it can be use to fill more shallow structural built garden beds. A cardboard layer on the bottom helps to wick moisture from the ground up needing less or no irrigation, dependent on location. With twigs in-between the layers we ensure good aeration so the entire system does not get waterlogged and dies causing stagnation in the osmotic process. Because of this, the lasagna concept is not ideal for Wicking bed, rain garden or in low spots.
Straw bale growing
Easy; take a straw bale and go plant away. Straws have usually a good carbon nitrogen ration, alfalfa straw has a carbon nitrogen ratio of 25:1, ideal for the plants to derive nutrients and microbial bacterial and fungal decay to take place. The only draw back is the rapid decay attracting unbeneficial microbes and fungi and as such insects and pests. Straw bale growing is a good option for seasonal growing with in your zone zero, one and two around your house and then to be distributed for further decay onto the outer layer of your zone plan; To Feed back into the soil, secondarily enriching other areas to become fertile. Decay can be slowed down by inoculation with edible mushrooms such as Oyster mushrooms and provide a secondary harvest in fall and spring.
Native ways of growing
Native American developed a way of growing their crops by imitating nature. Through observation they realized that salmon from bears, smaller sea creature eaten by birds and other larger animal eaten by wolfs, bob cats or coyotes and the carcasses the animals leave behind were dragged onto land and scattered onto the close by environment. The covering of falling debis helped the left over feasts to be integrated into the cycle of decay at a lot faste rate than laying out in the open. Native American would, because of this observation use their carcasses and as well feed it back to the soil underground, in before unfertile soil This was enriching chosen areas slowly over time with very sustainable outcomes. In a garden we can spot plant our bone and vegetable stock left overs or fish carcasses in areas we realize nutrients may be lacking into a deeper layer of soil, so wild life can not smell and access it.
Huegel Kultur
Huegel culture is an ancient German growing concept, meaning mount culture; Where woods of different ages and sizes are layered with fresh cut shrubs, grass clippings, and green debris. All is mounted up to the preferred height and covered in wood chips. The more old dark and rotten the wood in the belly of the huegel, the faster we stabilize the entirety of the mount. Water logged and old wood, it being closer to the humus stage, and as such stabilizing the fluctuation in carbon nitrogen ratio faster, giving off nutrient more stable continuous than fluctuating soil. The older the huegel culture gets the bette the soil becomes. The greatest benefit is the self containing water supply that fills up every time it rains. The older the wood gets the more water it is able to store.
The concept of a huegel culture is most versatile and can be applied to almost any grow operation to fill any type of structure built grow bed mentioned before. There is no real limits to the application possibilities for shape and size of operation you are planning on.