DC,
In your photos, it appears like you have chicory, purslane and miner's lettuce growing all around your fancy city- girl raised beds? When purslane (
portulaca odorfera grows in a garden or a field, that's an excellent indicator that the soil has all the nutrients it needs to grow almost any crop. Purslane will not grow in poor, non -friable soil.
If a person were to take some scrap cardboard, lay this out in rows,5 feet wide by 72-80 feet long; each row separated by 3-4 feet. On this cardboard, a person were to place well amended and friable soil, to a minimum depth of, eighteen inches, in the center of each row, feathering to the edges no less than eight inches; this person would have a countrified, low- cost, alternative to that fancy, dig- in - your- hard- earned- cash- purse; citified version of a raised bed! After a season or few, the cardboard rots, the turf underneath the cardboard rots, thus providing much hard- to- obtain carbon to the soil, while increasing carbon credits. Besides, doesn't this concept help to settle part of the
"Moral Conundrum?"
In actuality, a bed thats 5' wide but is mounded 18" deep in the center has just over 6' of growing surface, from edge to edge of the row. Now think about this...park a stool in the space between rows. One can easily reach the center of each row without crawling about on one's knees and you don't lose valuable space like you do with those boxes, in between on each end, times how many boxes in each row?
