Frame Bed - The Most Effective Of The Beds

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

If you closely follow the literary novelties, periodicals and advertising in the media, we will definitely note that in recent years, Russian summer residents and gardeners have been systematically weaned from the agricultural technology of our ancestors.

This is most clearly manifested when creating beds on the plots for growing various vegetables.

We are persistently advised to use, for example, mound beds (according to M. Haase), bed-heaps (according to K. von Heinitz) and check beds (according to D. Mittlider).

Moreover, many lovers of everything foreign have already actively joined such advice, including even a part of agricultural specialists.

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Unfortunately, as the author's impartial analysis of the schemes for the arrangement of these beds has shown (Fig. A, B, C), they not only lack any advantages, but, on the contrary, they have very significant disadvantages:

• all three beds are characterized by irrational use of the land, since the area under plantings is only 25-50% of the occupied by the beds;
• from the passages between such beds, weeds intensively creep onto their slopes and planting sites, inhibiting the growth of plants and requiring weeding;
• due to the lack of reliable protection, the beds in our climate freeze excessively from the sides in winter and thaw for a long time in early spring;
• under the influence of snow loads and rains, the beds quickly settle and collapse, and with the loss of fertile soil and applied fertilizers due to rolling into the aisles;
• due to the inevitable loss of their initial shape, all the beds in the spring require large labor costs for restoration.

I myself was fully convinced of the validity of all the indicated shortcomings of the considered beds, when, in the wake of the very first advertising tips, I was seduced by a bed-check according to D. Mitlider (Fig. C) and created it on my site. As it turned out, already in the middle of the first summer, the earthen sides of the beds gradually disappeared, spreading both along the side slopes and in the plant bed, and this bed became trough-shaped, and fertilizing fertilizers began to fall in the center between two rows of plants. Despite some measures taken, in the second year, almost all of the above drawbacks of the check bed were repeated.

Considering all of the above, I still had to abandon all the beds according to Figures A, B and C, and then I made all the beds on the site frame (Fig. D). They are completely devoid of all the above drawbacks and have justified themselves well. And this despite the certain costs for materials for wooden walls and supports.

At the same time, to increase the efficiency of such beds, I simultaneously carried out the following three very important measures:

1. Sheathed wooden walls and support posts with plastic wrap, which protects the wood from premature decay in the ground.
2. He created cushions in the subsoil layer of the beds either from cardboard and paper waste, or from sod and various organic matter (foliage, sawdust, chopped branches, stems, etc.), or from green manure crops (lupine, phacelia, etc.), or from a mixture of such organics that suppress the growth of weeds and restrain freezing of the soil.
3. Formed in the upper fertile layer a bed for plants and semi-collars along the walls, ensuring full preservation of the applied fertilizers and moisture for nutrition and development of the root system of the crops grown.

Equally important was the fact that it is very easy and simple to attach various shelters on frame beds, made in the form of wire arcs or frames covered with plastic wrap. This allows, if necessary, to cover and warm up the soil of the beds in spring 2-3 weeks earlier and effectively protect crops and plantings from early spring frosts. And since the walls of the beds are equipped with the same lugs, and the arches are interchangeable, the installation or removal of shelters is very easy and almost instantaneous.

You can make frame beds, designed to be used for several years, at any time (in spring, summer or autumn), as soon as you have the materials necessary for this. In this case, it is not at all necessary to use conditioned boards and bars for the frame. You can use lumpy wood waste in the form of slabs, cuttings, scraps of boards, podtovoy, poles, etc.

The garden bed itself is quite simple: first you need to plan a place for it, dig a trench on the bayonet of a shovel, drive the support posts into the ground in the corners and nail the prepared walls to them from the outside with nails. After that, the above components are placed on the bottom of the bed, the soil removed from the trench mixed with compost is poured on top of them, and the above-mentioned bed and half-boards are arranged on top of it. To avoid weeds at all, the aisles between the beds can be covered with sawdust or covered with pieces of cardboard, old wallpaper, etc.

As evidenced by many years of personal experience, frame beds with accumulated humus in them do not need to be dug up annually, but just loosened. At the same time, crops are harvested much earlier, and, as a rule, 1.3-1.5 times higher than on ordinary beds.