I’m relatively early in my permaculture journey, so sorry if this is some basic stuff. I’m also seeking advice on design for veggie patches for personal consumption/potential sale of excess, hoping I’m hitting the right sub!
We’re going through the process of converting a (previously) livestock housing paddock to a large veggie patch with orchard and duck housing. I’ve planted out around 200m of local native trees and shrubs (currently very young) to form a couple of windbreaks for the veggies and orchard as well as a food forest in a different part of the paddock down the line. We’re now at the stage of planning the veggie patch and I’m a bit stuck on how best to approach the beds.
I’ve attached a couple of photos of the site and a very rough sketch (sorry for my handwriting) of the plan in case they’re useful. Worth noting I’m in the southern hemisphere, so I’m using a north-facing slope.
The site has a slope of around 11-15cm per metre. I’m planning 75cm beds running across the slope with 45cm paths between them. Issue being, with this slope, it looks like I’ll have around an 18cm drop between beds and I’m worried about those eroding/collapsing over time. Am I approaching this in the right way or do I need to be planning narrower beds to reduce the drop off to the next terrace? I can build retaining walls to contain each bed/path, this will just come with an extra cost that we would ideally avoid and will make it more difficult to get light machinery into the beds (walk-behind tractors etc.)
Another concern at this stage (if anyone has experience/thoughts) is the size of the orchard which might be 20m on the short arm, 28m on the long arm. Width is yet to be decided (noting it will affect the size of the veggie patch) but, given I want to install netting over the whole orchard area before planting, I’m conscious of limiting the space I’m allowing for it.
submitted by /u/uprightman88
[link] [comments]
