Row Gardening = Maxing Out Production.

I recently posted photos of raised bed gardening. I‘ve been using that technique to grow a lot of food, but mainly as a kitchen garden and to protect behind a super fence the varieties that critters (deer) love.

While I‘ve grown everything in the raised bed/square foot gardening method, including beans, corn, and squashes, some of these take a lot of room. Also, if your growing in volume for winter storage, row gardening definitely has its place on the homestead. Sometimes you just need to break out and go big. Here’s some picks of row gardening I’ve done And the tiller/tractor I’m using.

In this first picture, I expanded into a hayfield We had. You can see that they are wide rows. I love wide rows. You can plant two or three rows in a wide row and create the same green mulching and water conservation benefits as in square foot gardening.

In this next picture, it’s an older row garden, I divide it into four sections and then rotate the crops up one section every year in a beneficial rotation schedule. You can actually divide into six sections to accommodate More families, but this space wasn’t big enough, plus the root, cabbage, and soft summer fruit era (tomatoes, etc) are in the fenced kitchen garden. I focused on the “bulk production“ in the rows: corn, beans, potatoes, pumpkins, onions, mustard/turnip greens. The critters didn’t mess with this too much as long as I could keep the crows out of the sprouting corn.

Following, in the foreground, are hilled potatoes, ahead of them, beans, further up onions, greens (not lettuce), sometimes pumpkins/squash, and at the very end corn. So in this four section row garden, planting goes like this: Head section, beans for nitrogen fixing. 2nd, potatoes for all the muck fertilize. 3rd, corn that follows two years of soil enrichment. 4th, my catch all like onions, greens, sometimes squash pumpkin (which are also heavy feeds so use some more compost on them. I have done some Three Sister gardening, but it can get messy.

The last pic, in my driveway, is the walk behind tractor I use for tilling and all of this wide row gardening. The tractor is an Italian made BCS. I’m not an advertiser, just a happy customer. It’s a true work horse and really gets the job done. In addition to the tiller, I have a rotary plow. It has a large auger underneath that kick the soil out sideways to build the rows. It can be used for single row; I like the wide row better. I used to make my row using rakes and hoes. What a difference this machine has made. I’ll love it till gasoline is no more. You can find distribution and sells at BCS America.

I hope this was enjoyable and helpful to some one.

Br Tom, cmj.