Seven beds

In this heavy clay the broadfork does not sink far. I step on one side of the bar and then the other, or even climb on and dance. Eight inches of penetration is better than none. The little dangling thing is my neck knife, which will come in handy tying up the beanpoles later.

I lean on the handles to lift the soil in the bed. It also helps to pull towards me a bit, rocking the forkful out of its original position some. It's not as much soil disturbance as plowing or tilling and can be done in wet soils, an advantage in clay.

Fifty feet in less than an hour! In loam it would go even faster. The bed is now lifted about two inches. It's fifty feet long because that is the length of the usual soaker hose.

With a hoe, I pull even more soil out of what will be the paths, raising the bed another inch or two. No need for built sides. This bed could easily be next year's path, a form of fallowing.

Half of the bed will be dedicated to peas, the other half to green beans and runner beans. Tomorrow I hope to come back through here with a lot of sugar snap peas (from Fedco). With these narrower beds, there will be room for seven beds between the blueberry bed and the raspberry bed.

In the three beds in the upper garden, there is now a row of broadbean seeds down the middle of each one. It is hoped these will supply some much needed nitrogen to the mixed greens, which are coming up in flats in the greenhouse.