Chop Wood Carry Water Plant Seeds is a blog about Self-Sufficient Homesteading. How can we live by creating a sustainable bio-diverse world, instead of by consuming and destroying the only one we have? What kind of teaching have you got if you exclude nature?

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Raised beds covered with wood chips

I have created several raised beds last year in a small area beside the chicken coop. I have filled them last year with aged horse manure. The manure has some saw dust in it so I thought it will be good enough to preserve moisture but this was not the case. We had a dry season last summer and even after watering it the water would not penetrate deep but rather it was soaked in the upper 1-2cm layer and this would dry up very fast. Wood chips behave differently; they let the water pass down into the deeper layers and then preserves the moisture for very long time (for weeks) even in a very hot and dry weather. Lesson leaned and now I'm covering all the beds with a 5-10 cm layer of aged wood chips.
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1 comment:

  1. coraxSeptember 11, 2015 at 6:58 AM

    Hiya, can you tell more about how you prepared your bed this year? Sorry, I've been only doing some urban gardening at my home balcony but I'm planning to rent an allotment. This is a totally new scale for me :) I read some about no-dig gardening and found your blog. The beds look very neat so I'd appreciate any additional details on them :) Thanks!

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