we use raised beds , doesn't need to be fancy or permanent with frames , etc . I had a guy with a tractor go through the area that I wanted to garden with his tractor a few years back and then I went through the garden numerous times with my BCS rear tine tiller . After I got the soil tilled up I went through the area with a flat , square shovel and I dug paths . I dug the first path and I threw the soil to the left building that bed up as high as I could with the dirt from the path . I dug the rest of the beds the same way and always threw the dirt to the left onto the bed and all beds are about the same width and the length of the bed doesn't matter . Beds are about 4 and a half feet wide and we can reach to the center of all beds from the paths . Beds can be a long as you like and can be routed around stumps , boulders and other obstructions and the garden looks very nice as it meanders along . After the beds are dug we just added organic material by hand that we got cheap or free , manure , leaves , grass clippings , vegetable scraps , sawdust , wood chips , coffee grounds , tea bags , etc. . We plant seeds like beans , peas , squash , cabbage , brussel sprouts , carrots and salad vegetables are generally seeds and we grow or buy plants [sets like tomatoes] to go in the dirt if they are cheap enough . Salad vegetables like lettuce , radishes , herbs , cherry tomatoes are mostly grown in pots outside the back door . As regards organic material , every weekend throughout the year my wife takes the weeks kitchen scraps to the garden and just digs them into a hole or furrow that she digs somewhere in the garden . In a few days the scraps are eaten by the worms or rotted away . The nice thing about doing these beds is that you never need to walk in the beds as you can reach into the center of the beds from either side from the paths . Every once in awhile I dress up the paths with a flat shovel trying to keep them flat and square . I also use straw or leaves in the path to kinda shore up the sides of the raised beds . Corn is just grown in a large plot in the traditional way , potatoes are grown in a raised bed in straw or leaves or combination of whatever organic material I have and as you pick tiny potatoes or big potatoes they are excellent and clean . Weeds are never a problem in my garden as I just pick them out of the beds as they are small and drop them into the path . One of the best things that I grow is ROMANO beans of the pole bean variety . I grow them in a raised bed about 4 - 5 feet width and about 20 feet long . I just plant the beans with no real concern on spacing and I put in 8 or 10 foot high HEAVY metal posts [as many as I have] throughout that bed and I run heavy garden string post to post for the beans to climb up . It looks good and produces extremely well and its a real jungle and all that green mass is HEAVY !!! I use no chems but will if they are needed , never had the soil tested as I just feed it as much organic material as I can . Diamataceous [sp] earth is excellent for hard body bugs like squash beetles and is organic and that's about all the bug killer I ever need . Just the way I've been doing gardening for the last 40 some years . I pretty much learned my methods from ORGANIC GARDENING magazine by Robert Rodale back in the 70s and early 80s and it works good for me !!
