The best size for raised garden bed is 30 inches. The reasons are as follow:
First of all, 30 inch bed the primary reason is it’s easy to manage by hand. it’s easy to walk across the field so there’s an advantage there with access and get in and out fast
but really what it’s about is consolidating the crop down to less space so you use less land. So in row crop farming where you see row – dead space – row – dead space and it’s a tractor running that. You’re wasting your land but you’re also creating more space for weeds
so that the real idea behind a 30 inch bed is less unusable land and less space for weeds also less space for erosion
so when we get heavy rains, the only erosion that’s really happening is in the walkways and that’s not so important to our production but also we’re creating a little mini microclimate where we’ve got shade on the soil and so we encourage biology in the bed.
We’re not walking on the bed so we’re not compacting the soil. It’s just for for many purposes it creates better soil.
In a market garden, we’re using hand tools so it’s just compacting the space.
Another thing that’s really great about it is you use less materials on 30 inch beds.
so when it comes to season extension, the biggest part of it is if you’ve got more crops compacted into less space, you need less greenhouse space. You need less row covers.
You need less insect netting. You need less irrigation. You’re using less of everything because your crops are more consolidated so that that’s the main idea there.
