I Like Raised Beds But You Dont Need Sidewalls

Desert soils with very poor structure and almost zero organic matter
in them need to be "ripped" deeply first. The irrigation drip lines
was used to wet the soil after ripping it. If  you look closely, the
drip lines are on now wetting the trenches to make the soil easier to
rototill after the compost is added.



I like raised bed gardening without sidewalls. In other words, you do not have to put up cinder blocks or build a large coffin to make a raised bed. Raised beds can be formed using the natural slope of the soil at the edges of the bed to retain the integrity of the bed.




Next, these soils need lots and lots of good quality
compost added to the surface of the bed in preparation
for rototilling or mixing with the native soil. The soil
beneath the compost was wetted before the compost
was added.

I posted instructions on “how to build raised beds” on my blog last year. Search the internet for “Xtremehorticulture of the Desert” and use the search window to type “how to build raised beds”.


 

Many desert soils are notoriously poor for
growing fruit and vegetables. But these same
soils can be made very productive if they are
modified with good quality compost. However
desert soils in the Las Vegas area that have been "modified" take about three years of continuous
cropping and modifying before they will produce some wonderful vegetables. Fruit trees will respond sooner than this. Dont get me wrong... you will get good vegetables the first year after thoroughly composting the soil but to get the highest quality will take you about three. And I mean VERY high quality. These desert soils are FULL of minerals...mostly good and a few can be bad but these bad ones will be mitigated over a couple of seasons of growing.




This soil is mixed thoroughly with the compost as deep as possible. Here we
are ripping the soil again with the compost on top. A rototiller will work
fine for small areas once the soil has been ripped and wetted.
 



The raised bed is finished. This ten foot (3.3m) wide planting
area was divided in half with an 18 in (0.5m) walkway.
The walkway was created by using a manure shovel
and adding the composted soil to the 3 foot (1m) wide
raised beds. The raised beds are elevated about one foot (0.3m)
above the walkway. Raised beds are seldom walked upon
when finished.

Generally, raised beds are about one yard wide and as long as you like. Walkways between the beds are about half a yard wide. You should have enough spaces for vegetables so you can rotate your vegetables to different spots each year. This helps keep pests and diseases from going rampant in your garden.



The irrigation system you see in these raised beds are made from PVC, some drip fittings, and in-line drip tubing such as Netafim's and Jain's.  I like the one gallon per hour emitters spaced about a foot apart if I am wetting the entire bed. Adjacent drip tubing is connected to the PVC pipe so the in-line emitters are triangularly spaced. If I dont need to wed the entire bed then I use in-line drip tubing the appropriate distance apart.