The Results Of My Little Carrot Bed Experiment

Dateline: 12 October 2016 AD

Click this picture for a larger view.

Back in July I posted some thoughts about my experiments with gardening in plastic (Click Here To Read). I was disappointed with Tom Doyle's Plant-And-Pick gardening system, but I wasn't persuaded that the idea was all bad. Instead of planting in 3" holes in the large sheet of plastic, I decided to try planting in an 18" diameter circle, as you can see above. 18" is the inside diameter of a standard tire sidewall, as you can also see above. The sidewall serves to hold the plastic from billowing up and blowing out of place.

I planted several different crops in these 18" diameter experimental plots, and they all grew very well. It is kind of amazing how much productivity you can get out of an 18" diameter bed, as you will shortly see.

In the carrot bed above there are five tri-plantings of Bolero carrots. Unlike my surprisingly popular Four-Day Carrots video on YouTube, I did not plant those carrots in a triangle within 3" holes in black plastic. Instead, I planted them 2.5" apart in a triangle using the planting template found on page 88 on my Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners.  And I used the aluminum shade discs (as seen in the video) to bring the seed up quick (see page 89 of the book for details). Five of these tri-plantings fit just right in an 18" diameter bed.

A few days ago, I harvested two of these experimental carrot beds. Here's what they looked like before digging...

I mulched both beds with dried grass clippings. Here's a close up...

Here's the carrot yield from one of the beds...

And here is the yield from the other bed...

I trimmed the tops, put all the carrots in one of my Whizbang Garden Totes (plans for making your own totes are in my book), and weighed them...

I ended up with 9.5 pounds of carrots from only two 18" diameter beds. 

An 18" diameter bed has 254 square inches of area. Two of these beds = 508 square inches, which is 3.5 square feet. That amounts to 2.71 pounds of carrots per square foot. Isn't math fun!

Next year I will be expanding on this little idea. Instead of planting in 18" diameter beds, with tire sidewalls to hold the plastic in place, I'll be planting in square beds that measure 27" x 27." A 2" x 4" frame (outside dimensions at 30" x 30") will serve to hold the plastic from billowing up. And the frames will also accommodate hoops with netting or row cover, if needed.

The square beds will have 5 square feet of soil to grow in. I'll use the same carrot tri-spacing and mulching technique as I used in this year's 18" experimental beds. And, based on this year's results, I should get 13.5 pounds of beautiful carrots from each bed.

You'll be seeing and hearing more about gardening in these square mini-beds, arranged over a large sheet of  heavy black plastic, as I pursue this idea next year. There is logic behind this, and I'll explain it more when the time comes.

For now, the point I want to make is that small beds can be very satisfyingly productive. And they are so much easier to manage than a large garden bed.