Over the last week we have begun work on our raised beds. Following the advice of a fellow gardener, Karen Watkins, we decided to use the French intensive double digging method on our beds. We decided upon this method for several reasons: First this method gives us very nice, loose soil to work with, and according to many accounts has more of the original microbial soil structure than using a rototiller. Secondly, this method is very labor intensive, and at the time we began we had very little lumber to work with, not nearly enough to build all of our raised beds, and therefore we had enough time to begin work double digging without delaying the rest of our garden. Our third reason for using the french intensive method is based on the amount of amendments for our soil we have access to. If we went with simple raised beds on top of the lawn, we would need far more manure and compost than we have access to. With this method, the soil gets fluffed up enough so that we have nearly 6 inches of usable soil, and need to mix in a much smaller amount of amendments.
The french intensive method may be hard to describe in text, but I will try my best. For each bed, we start by digging a trench in one end, about two feet wide, four feet long (equal to the width of our bed), and one foot deep. The soil that is removed from this trench should be put in a wheelbarrow, or just off to the side, to be used for later.
Laura digging the final section of this bed
Next you should take a manure fork and proceed to loosen the soil another foot down. This should be done by first placing the fork in at one end of your trench, driving it as far down as possible, wiggling it to loosen the soil, and then removing it. Repeat this after rotating the fork 90 degrees and moving it to one side or the other of the trench, so the you are now loosening the same soil from the side. Repeat this on the other side of the trench, and then move on to the next section (about one forks width further down the trench). Repeat the entire process until you have loosened down the entire length of the trench.
Loosen on each side, and then repeat going down the trench.
Now you have completed one section of the bed! Next you should dig out the adjacent two feet, which would double the width of your trench, however instead of putting the dirt aside this time, you put it back on top of the area you just loosened with your manure fork. If you dig down the same depth each time, you should end up with several inches of nice loose soil on top. You now proceed to repeat the whole process, until you reach the end of your bed. This time, after loosening the final section of ground, you will have no new section to dig up. Remember that soil we put aside from the first section? Yup, you guessed it, take the soil from the first trench and put it in the last one. Hopefully, if you dug all of the sections the same size, making this the perfect amount of soil to finish off the bed.
While this method may be very time consuming, I think it will be worth our effort. At this point we have dug out two full beds, and about half of two more, when we ran into a setback or two, but I will save that for a later post…
City Secret 