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raised bed organic gardening



  
In the newly formed permaculture newsgroup, alt.permaculture,
the group consensus regarding having a newsgroup for organic 
gardening (at present there isn't one _by that name_) was not 
to start one for this purpose but to use our own permaculture
newsgroup. So, since organic gardening is part of permaculture 
we could do the same with this mailing list. To that end I would 
like to know:

1) If anyone here is actually involved in building, planting
and maintaining raised bed gardens on an ongoing basis
2) Is anyone using traditional hand tools to do 1), i.e.
English-type hand forged tools: digging forks and spades,
eye hoes of any type from any country, scythes or machetes
for cutting cover crops and hay mulch. What hand tools do you 
like best? What are recommended sources for these? 


After considerable prepping of my 6 acres with tractor +
plow and Soil Saver I am now building raised garden beds in 
a varity of locations. I hope to build a number of them using some
of the plans in Mollison's Designer's Manual, to include Mandala
and spiral gardens. Crenelated borders between beds and
adjoining plantings is a very worthwhile scheme and lends itself to 
easily and creatively extending planted zones into other, unplanted, 
areas of a site forming fertile edge zones and areas especially 
beneficial for wildlife. I do market garden and am especially 
interested in soil tilth and fertility. Cover cropping with legumes and
grasses as a way to improve soil, water and nutrient retention, deep tilth
and establishment of beneficial microorganisims, earthworms and colonies
of other useful insects (earthworms, dung beetles, spiders and ants are
very helpful) is becoming an important and useful practive for me, though 
I often let the soil seed bank supply a variety of interesting weeds to
harvest or reseed. 

Lawrence F. London, Jr. -+|+- Venaura Farm
london@metalab.unc.edu   lflondon@worldnet.att.net
http://metalab.unc.edu/london, /permaculture, /ecolandtech
EcoLandTech -+|+- InterGarden -+|+- Permaculture