mwemaxxowner
Platinum Member
My wife and I planted our first garden this year. We made some mistakes and there are things I'll do different, but by and large it was a great success. The size was about 20x35 and I'll probably do about the same size next year.
I'm starting to think about plans for next year's garden, and what I'll do differently now that I have a tractor. This year I borrowed a tractor and a tiller, spread a few inches of compost over the garden and tilled it in. I planted everything in flat rows, and this did seem to be fairly successful.
I'm wondering if I need to hill my rows up into furrows this coming year, or stick to flat. I don't have a problem with standing water in the garden, in fact we usually have drought. The native soil is mostly sand and drains very well. I ran soaker hose down each row on a timer so the lack of rainfall was really a non-issue. Just thought I'd mention it.
I'm guessing a raised row would potentially lead to the plants drying out, but aside from that I wondered if I build raised rows, if I can put mulch between the rows in the valleys between to help cut down on weeds. I had zero weeds while we had drought, because the only water to sustain life was where my soaker hose was running. We had a rainy spell toward the end of summer though, and my weeds exploded and I couldn't stay on top of them. I realized my rows were too close together, plants too crowded, I couldn't do much to get on top of the weeds without damaging plants. And they were just too much and too thick to accomplish much by hand.
I figure I'll probably put down a weed barrier this year also. I did not this past year.
I'm starting to think about plans for next year's garden, and what I'll do differently now that I have a tractor. This year I borrowed a tractor and a tiller, spread a few inches of compost over the garden and tilled it in. I planted everything in flat rows, and this did seem to be fairly successful.
I'm wondering if I need to hill my rows up into furrows this coming year, or stick to flat. I don't have a problem with standing water in the garden, in fact we usually have drought. The native soil is mostly sand and drains very well. I ran soaker hose down each row on a timer so the lack of rainfall was really a non-issue. Just thought I'd mention it.
I'm guessing a raised row would potentially lead to the plants drying out, but aside from that I wondered if I build raised rows, if I can put mulch between the rows in the valleys between to help cut down on weeds. I had zero weeds while we had drought, because the only water to sustain life was where my soaker hose was running. We had a rainy spell toward the end of summer though, and my weeds exploded and I couldn't stay on top of them. I realized my rows were too close together, plants too crowded, I couldn't do much to get on top of the weeds without damaging plants. And they were just too much and too thick to accomplish much by hand.
I figure I'll probably put down a weed barrier this year also. I did not this past year.