Raised Bed Gardening in Arkansas

Subject:  Introduction  5-31-2012 

     I've never made a blog before, so this one will most likely go through a few changes as I learn a little more about the process.

     A little background on myself ... I really enjoy gardening and have been doing this for my family (and myself) for many years.  The soil where I live is really pitiful for raising anything and I tried just about everything I could think of to make it better.  I started with only about a half inch of top soil with shale and clay going down for several feet.  Any time it rained, the rain would just run off the top and create a crust that plants had difficulty breaking through.  I brought in truck-load after truck-load of leaves, old hay, manure ... nothing seemed to give the soil the sustainability I needed for a good garden.  I even bought a new self-propelled rear-tine tiller to help with the breaking up and it dragged me all over the place and like to beat me to death.

     In the late 1990s - early 2000s, I was introduced to raised beds as an alternative to a conventional row garden and have been sold ever since.  I've run through the whole gauntlet of bedding side materials, path materials, height, width, depth, watering systems, critter control methods, insect pest control, weed control, top cover materials, mulching, shading, sunlight requirements for different plants, spacing with different plants to get the most yield, poisons vs natural selection (and plucking), companion plants ... just about everything that has to do with an organic vegetable garden, I've tried it.  It seems that no matter how many books or articles I've read ... I always have to learn by application ... well, isn't documented observable experimental results the scientific method?

     In the future posts of this blog, I hope to shed some light on many of the things that I have discovered, and on what I have seen to work the best in my own situation.  Other places in the country have different environmental concerns; such as rainfall, temperature variations, pests that are more active (or inactive), plant diseases that transfer from the surrounding vegetation ... etc, and I cannot possibly tell you what will work the best in your own situation.  I can, and will attempt to give you the gist of my own knowledge (which is constantly expanding), and see if we can have some fun together with our fingers in the dirt.

Thanks for joining me ... Duane Clancy