John Harris, digging a deep-trench bed


    While Head Gardener  Harris and the Cornish Head Gardeners who went before him dug their beautiful deep trench beds by hand, I chose to use an excavator to dig through the 20 inches of hard pan with which this region is plagued. Upon seeing photos of my beds being dug, the Head Gardener quipped, "you cheated." And so I did...if I had dug them by hand someone would have had to bury me in one of them. 
    The deep trench beds are 3 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 24 feet long. When the trench is dug, an 18" layer of clean straw is spread out in the bottom of the bed. After the straw is laid in, layers of humus, manure, soil and composted horse manure are added. The result is a sponge made by all the organic materials, which holds moisture and nourishes the plants continually.
    While my small new garden just outside my greenhouse is made of 8inch and 18 inch deep raised beds, the beds in the deep-trench-bed vegetable garden are edged with 2x6inch 10 foot long redwood boards so they appear to be just raised beds, but the beauty of them is that they are filled deeply with rich soil and all the nutrients my plants need to thrive.       Just as the Moon pulls  the oceans' tides all over the world each day, she also has an effect on the water tables all over the planet. In the micro-environment of the deep trench beds, she does the same thing. In my Colorado garden, which is at 6,440 feet in elevation, and which annually receives 13 inches of rain in a wet year, I have reduced the amount of water I use dramatically with the deep trench beds.      
     Without having performed any scientific studies on the subject, my guess is that I now save 35-40% of the water I used to use before I converted my garden to the trench beds and adopted John Harris's moon gardening techniques and methods. 
    Each autumn and then again the following spring, into my garden beds I till in a deep layer of composted stable manure and also a thin layer of wood ash. My garden is solely organic, fed by seaweed, bone & blood meal,  and wood ash. This  year I will begin feeding with the wonderfully powerful comfrey tea, about  which John Harris says, "this is a real witches brew, this is, and it's got all the nutrients your plants love. You make it by combining equal parts comfrey leaves and water and left to decompose in a lidded container. The smell is terrible but the benefits are wonderful."  I am looking forward to seeing what results my garden will enjoy from the comfrey tea. 
{photo courtesy of John & Olive Harris}

In memory of my beloved, beautiful Mojo, the maker of the finest manure in all of gardening history. Born a colt, he died a gentleman in mid-October, 2009.