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Re: Natural raised beds

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

----- Original Message ----- From: margaret lauterbach <mlaute@micron.net>>
> You made adobe. Margaret L
>
> At 09:16 AM 4/27/2000 -0700, you wrote:
> >Charlie- I just remembered that in Girl scouts we mixed clay with straw
and
> >water and made- -well I don't remember what we made- but they were
> >hard-almost like pottery.-Teri

On a more positive note:

A clayey soil, straw and water mix does not make adobe.  It will simply dry
as a hard clod which is pretty easy to break up with a rototiller or will
break up easily when soaked with water.  There is a bit more to ADOBE
making than simply mixing clay, straw and water and letting it dry in the
sun.  We have many very old adobe block houses in Phoenix and a few ones
each year (very few because of strict structural building codes) are
constructed each year.

Our native desert soil is an orangish alkaline clay with virtually no
organic material, no nitrogen, very little phosphorous, an abundance of
potassium and calcium, and a native pH of around 8.0.  But it is rich in
most other nutrients and with a little work it can be very productive.  Our
irrigation water is runoff from the Colorado Plateau and comes in at about
pH 8.0.  With only an inch or so of rainfall during the 4-month spring
growing season, drainage is not a problem if one works in plenty of organic
matter, tills deep enough, and doesn't over-water.

There may be advantages to raised sqft beds in some areas but here the hot
dry desert winds wind will dry out the beds very rapidly, especially around
the edges, and earthen beams around ground-level sqft beds have worked
pretty well for many of us over the years.  After running parallel drip
tapes through the beds spaced at 10-12 inches, I usually mulch with clean
straw (wheat or rye, then work it into the soil after harvest and either
plant something else with a mulch cover  or cover it with an organic
compost.  I have heard the discussions about C:N ratios (more recently
greens and browns) and that decomposition of the straw robs the crop of
nutrients but I have never personally found that to be a problem.  The
trick is to keep the soil covered and keep it from completely drying out,
even when there is no crop planted.- if you lack organic compost, you can
always cover it with newspapers.  With earthen berms, I can run my 28
year-old 8 HP Troybilt through the garden every year or so and work in 3-4
inches of manure, then it is a pretty simple matter to reconstruct or
reconfigure the beds.

What works or doesn't work for some people doesn't necessarily mean it will
apply to you depending on your circumstance.

Olin


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