notillgrowers

Open full view…

Bed Orientation

feathersfarmwaterloo
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 00:11:09 GMT

I “may be” noticing that my east-west beds are performing better than my north-south beds. I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to this, but heard something in one of the podcasts that made me scratch my head. A quick google search resulted in a flood of opinions and attempts at logic, but facts and results are more what I’m looking for. Anyone? Ps: sorry if this has been asked, I did search and didn’t find anything in a timely manor.

farmerjesse
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 08:28:59 GMT

This is a great question. I don’t know how much scientific research has actually been done about this. Our experience and often my recommendation to folks (especially those who are not growing a ton of tall crops like corn) is to orient beds based on land first then on the sun. To me, it’s more important that you get the drainage or water retention. However, if possible or if working with perfectly flat land, then east west has always been our preference. No science there, just from our experience.

Dawson Mehalko
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 11:48:14 GMT

What Jesse said here about the lay of the property is most important. I've gone with North to South because I'm pretty far south (north texas) and running them N-S causes the least amount of shade being cast by crops/greenhouses/structures.

dcfarm
Sat, 07 Sep 2019 18:22:18 GMT

I always thought E W was preferred as long as tallest crops were planted in the northernmost rows or beds.

sonorapermaculture
Sat, 07 Sep 2019 21:01:34 GMT

for me beds should be placed based on climate and crop. we prefer keyline patterning in our context. in low rainfall events all of the water infiltrates into the soil, where in high runoff evens the water is pushed towards the ridges and hydrates as much as possible before running into overflow access ( in our case planted with white clover to prevent erosion) this way you get no damage like overflowing beds in contour systems and the benefits of high infiltration in contour beds.