That happens to be the same length as a concrete block, so that makes it easy to measure out. The paths between the beds are 16 inches wide. I have done no measurements at all, but I am guessing that the beds are recolonized much more quickly after disturbance than they would be if I tilled the whole field every year like I used to. There is no way to grow and harvest root crops that doesn’t involve a lot of soil disturbance, but permanent beds at least eliminate all the collateral damage that would otherwise be required. We don’t have any damaging burrowers here, like gophers. They sit on the native soil and soil organisms can come and go. There is no barrier on the bottom of the beds. Together, these make a bed that is 10 inches tall, which is a convenient sitting height. The beds are built out of 29 8x8x16 inch standard masonry blocks and 29 2x8x16 inch pavers. Beds of this size accommodate 32 potato or oca plants, 16 ulluco or dahlia plants, 12 mashua or yacon plants, for example.

A two foot wide bed can fit one or two rows of plants, depending on size. Also, the longer the bed, the more obvious poorly leveled ground becomes. There is no particular reason for the 16 foot length, other than that it divided into a equal number of beds for a plot of my size. The exterior dimensions are 40 inches x 17 feet, 4 inches. Oh, not having to do field prep each spring in a climate that gets more than 100 inches of rain? Priceless. It is sure nice to be able to sit instead. I previously had to do a lot of that on my hands and knees. I spend hours every day weeding and doing hand pollinations. One of the biggest advantages is that I don’t have to bend over as far and have a convenient place to sit while working. I can use a string trimmer around the beds without the risk of decapitating valuable seedlings. Raised beds make weeding faster and easier. I have lived with it for years, but it is depleted and rocky, so raised beds filled with good quality soil are definitely a luxury. I started growing in lazy beds, which accomplished the same thing, but required a lot more maintenance, ironically. I don’t have to worry about tubers on long stolons escaping out of bounds. It is much easier to control volunteers as well, because they can only occur in confined areas. Any individual bed can be covered in plastic and solarized or, in a worst case scenario, sterilized or removed entirely. Raised beds keep plants of different varieties separate from each other and make it easy for me to quarantine a particular bed if I discover something I need to eliminate. I am also concerned about managing disease, since I deal mostly with clonally propagated crops.

I used to grow in ground and that worked reasonably well, but the raised beds make the grid spacing much easier to discern. By growing on a grid, I only have to know where a plant is growing in order to identify it. They get lost or become unreadable and they can be hard to find regardless. If you have several thousand seedlings from different crosses to track, using plant tags is really not a great option. I grow on a grid system so that I can identify individual seedlings.

There are a lot of advantages to using raised beds, particularly when breeding plants. Making all those beds was a considerable investment of labor, but I think it was overwhelmingly worthwhile. I have about 250 concrete block beds, which is a pretty big endorsement of their advantages. I do most of my plant breeding work in raised beds and I often get questions about them when I post pictures, so this article will hopefully answer those questions.

2x8x16 concrete block