How to Make Permaculture Garden Beds

Permaculture garden beds are suitable for growing many types of plants.

Permaculture and sustainability are buzzwords that represent ways of becoming more "green," or ecologically conscious, by growing more of your own food items right at home. Permaculture means "permanent agriculture." It is also a method of planning and organizing your property to work at peak efficiency. A permaculture technique called sheet composting makes creating a garden bed quick, easy and inexpensive.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Graph paper
• Stakes
• Hammer
• String
• Lawn mower or trimmer
• Newspaper or flattened cardboard
• Organic materials such as peat moss, compost and wood ash
• Shovel
• Rake
• Lawn sprinkler

Instructions

1. Measure your planned garden bed area and also determine how many hours each day it will receive full sun. Make sure the area is convenient to your house and that you'll have good access to it by means of pathways, sidewalks or other types of walkways.

2. Plot your area on graph paper, allowing areas about 4 feet wide by 8 to 12 feet long for your permaculture beds. Be sure to leave sufficient space between beds to allow you to walk through them comfortably and create enough space for the plants you plan to grow.

3. Mow or weed the area(s) where you will create your bed(s). You needn't dig out grass and other small plants. Then mark the bed areas with stakes and string.

4. Lay thick layers of newspaper or flattened cardboard boxes on top of the areas that will become your permaculture beds.

5. Pile organic materials such as compost, peat moss, topsoil, fallen leaves and chopped-up plant parts such as last summer's tomato or corn plants on top of the cardboard. You can make your bed as deep as you want, depending on what you plan to plant.

6. Rake the top of your bed level and then water the area for at least 20 minutes, using a lawn sprinkler. You can begin to plant immediately.

Tips & Warnings

• Smaller plants such as herbs need less growing space for their root systems than larger plants such as fruit trees: build your permaculture bed accordingly, based on the type of plant you will be planting in it.

• You can surround your permaculture beds with wooden frames or rocks to help keep the soil mix in place and also to improve the appearance.

• Be careful not to include any plants that have signs of disease or insects in the organic materials you layer in your bed.

References

• Ohio State University: Raised Bed Gardening
• "Lasagna Gardening"; Patricia Lanza; 1998
• "Introduction to Permaculture"; Bill Mollison; 1997
• Deep Green Permaculture: Raised Garden Beds