Mission Endure 56: Increasing Your Garden’s Productivity Using Minibeds on Plastic
The research I did for this Blog Post resulted in an article I wrote for The Organic Prepper Website. You can find that article here. Link.
Our house sits on a three quarters of an acre lot in the Illinois suburbs of St Louis. Most of our land is on a hill, but there is a flat spot at the bottom of our back yard where we have been building our small garden for the last several years. We have been slowly making the change from being casual gardeners who are interested in making our own salsa to die hard gardeners with a desire to provide food security for our family. Watching the supply chain issues with home cleaning supplies and food during the Covid-19 quarantine reinforced our decision to become more self-reliant and dedicated to garden production and less tied to suppliers who are affected by issues that we have no control over. Our desire to be more self-reliant pushes us to make changes to our garden that help it to be as productive as possible. We feel much better with the system we have now than we did just two years ago. We are by no means expert gardeners. We just wanted to document the conversion of our garden over the last few years.
Figure 1. Our raised bed garden in August 2017. Tomatoes, Jalapenos, Beans, and Zucchini.
In 2017 we converted our garden from planting rows of plants to a raised bed garden system, but the weeds were horrendous and we were spending about an hour per week weeding the garden. You can see in Figure 1 how the weeds were still present in our garden even with plastic covering the planting beds. We were using plastic inside the raised beds to keep the weeds at a minimum, but the system wasn’t working well for us and it was difficult to access some of the plants in the garden due to the proximity of fencing and the raised beds being planted too close together. Plus, the garden was a mess and needed to be reorganized. St Louis has hot and humid summers and weeds thrive on the weather. Sometimes it was difficult to get motivated to weed the garden in June, July, and August because it was so steamy.
At the end of 2017, not long after we harvested our garden for the final time that year, we came across Herrick Kimball's Minibeds on Plastic website. Herrick’s system made sense to us. It focused on maximizing production and minimizing the weeds, and it looked very organized. We bought his PDF guide, which was very well written and very helpful, and started converting our garden over to the Minibeds on Plastic system. The Minibeds on Plastic system changed our garden from a wild and overgrown inconsistent producer with many areas that were hard to access and constantly in need of weeding, to a true system that was very well organized and now produces an abundance of fruit and vegetables and very few weeds. It took a lot of work to get there, but most of the hard work can be done in the late fall and winter after the final harvest, when the garden and yard work are shutting down for the year. Over the winter of 2018 we expanded the fencing around the garden, enlarging the garden by about 50%.
The Minibeds on Plastic system consists of a series of 30” by 30” small raised beds made of wood that are spaced approximately 18” apart and are constructed on top of a plastic mulch barrier. The plastic inside the wood frames is cut out and removed and these areas are used as mini planting beds. The entire garden outside of the 30” by 30” Minibeds is covered with plastic film which holds moisture in the soil and prevents weeds from growing between the Minibeds.
To get started, we purchased the plastic mulch film from Farm Plastic Supply. Covering the garden with plastic was the hardest part of the garden makeover. The plastic is very thin, and any gust of wind lifted it and blew it around. Illinois is known for our wind, so we were fighting the plastic until we had it anchored to the ground. Figure 2 is a photo of the early stages of our Minibeds on Plastic garden system, just as we got it started in 2018.
Figure 2. Laying out the plastic in the garden in May 2018
In Figure 2 we were trying to keep our Strawberry plants intact, so I cut a hole in the plastic around them, and anchored down the plastic around them with the garden bench, but it ended up not working and we covered them up with plastic later in the year.
After we laid out the plastic we used the wooden Minibed frames and landscape edging to hold the plastic down. The Minibed frames are secured to the ground with 2’ lengths of 3/8” rebar. It works to hold them very steady and in turn the wooden Minibeds hold down the plastic film. We used string guides to ensure we had the 18” spacing correct and in a line to keep the Minibeds organized.
Figure 3. Our first 6 Minibeds secured to the plastic in May 2018
Normally we grow most of our plants from seed, but in 2018 we were late and found two huge Tomato plants at a garden center. We couldn’t resist buying them. We started many of our other plants from seed, but these two Tomato plants were too awesome to resist. So these were the first two plants we planted in our new renovated garden. Figures 4 through 8 are photos showing this process and how the Minibeds looked after we planted them in May 2018. We used leftover pieces of our fencing for Tomato cages. We always want to recycle used items in our garden if possible. We added a few more Minibeds in June and had a total of 12 Minibeds by the end of 2018.
Figure 4. Prepping the soil for our first Tomato plant
Figure 5. Two huge Tomato plants. One per Minibed
Figure 6. Our first two Minibeds planted with leftover fencing used as Tomato cages
We added Cucumbers, Watermelons, Zucchinis, and Hot Peppers to our garden in May 2018.
Figure 7. Getting the rest of the garden planted in May 2018
Figure 8. The garden was so much more organized in 2018
The garden shifted into high gear in June and Figures 9-11 document the growth we had experienced in the first month of our Minibeds on Plastic experiment. We were shocked. These photos were taken when we came back from vacation, and the garden looks like it is in need for some weeding and pruning, but nothing like the massive amount of work it took as a traditional raised-bed garden.
Figure 9. Explosive growth throughout June 2018
Figure 10. Everything seems to be growing well
Figure 11. Easy access and not many weeds
We started harvesting our Minibeds on Plastic garden on July 15, 2018. Figure 12 shows our modest first harvest, but it was after only for two months worth of growth. 2018 was a great year for our garden. It produced heavily through September and gave us a lot of enjoyment.
Figure 12. Our first Minibeds on Plastic harvest in July 2018
Figure 13. The first Tomato we planted from the garden center
Our cucumbers and watermelons produced an incredible harvest throughout the year
Figure 14. The Cucumbers produced heavily
Figure 15. The Watermelons produced lots of smaller, but very tasty Watermelons
Since 2018 we have expanded our garden to 22 Minibeds and we grow several different types of Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Sweet and Hot Peppers, Lettuce, Radishes, Carrots, Garlic, Zucchini, Butternut Squash, Strawberries, Onions, Pole and Bush Beans, and Cucumbers. This past spring we also added Apple Trees to our garden and we are looking to add more fruit trees in the coming years. This is our first time planting Garlic and it grows amazingly fast. Did you know the word Chicago comes from a Native American word for garlic?
Figure 16. Garlic planted in the fall continues to grow all winter. This is how our Garlic looked in May 2021
We have learned several lessons from our experiment with the Minibeds on Plastic system.
1. Gardening should be fun. We enjoy planting and harvesting our garden when it is cool outside. We hate spending time in the middle of summer weeding our garden when it is hot and humid. As you can see in Figure 16, in the Minibeds on Plastic system about 70% of our garden is covered in plastic and in our case rocks on top of plastic, so the weeding is minimal. It makes gardening much more fun.
Figure 17. Growing well in early June 2021
2. The 18” spacing between Minibeds is ideal for us. It helps us have easy access to each of the Minibeds so that it makes harvesting and weeding a much easier task
3. Figure 17 shows how the Minibed system is a custom fit for drip irrigation. We have installed drip irrigation because it helps to keep a consistent flow of water to our garden. The tomatoes split less frequently because they are consistently watered and all of the garden benefits from targeted watering. Drip irrigation only places water where we want it and doesn’t spread water to unproductive parts of the garden. This helps keep the weeds from growing.
Figure 18. Tomatoes in the foreground and Zucchini , Lettuce, and Garlick in the background
4. We have been using the same black plastic film for the past 3 years and it doesn’t show any signs of failure. We believe it may last another 2 years or more. Our plan was to get 5 years of use from the plastic film and it looks like we are right on track or possibly exceed that.
5. The plastic film helps slow down evaporation and retains more moisture in the soil so the garden needs less frequent watering than before we switched to the Minibeds on Plastic system.
6. The black plastic film keeps the garden warmer during the hot summer months. To combat the heat we recycled some of our landscape river rock from planters around the house to cover up the black plastic film. It keeps the garden cooler and keeps our feet from getting wet when we walk through the garden after a rain. Sometimes after a rain the black plastic would be slippery. The river rocks helps a lot.
Figure 19. Tomatillos and Beans go well together
7. We continue to experiment with fencing. We live on the very edge of suburbia and have lots of critters who like to nibble on our garden. Keeping them out has been a challenge. We now have three layers of fencing to keep even the smallest of rabbits out of our garden. In the past all it would take is one overnight feeding frenzy and they would decimate our Green Beans, Lettuce, and Hot Peppers. We think we have a much better system now. We are trying to keep deer, rabbits, foxes, and raccoons our of the garden and you can see the three different layers of fencing we are using in Figure 20. During the Covid 19 quarantine in 2020 we installed an aluminum 5’ tall fence which deters the deer from eating our garden, although they nibble on our apple trees planted outside the garden fence. Inside of that aluminum fence we originally installed a wire mesh fence that would keep some of the smaller animals like foxes and large rabbits out of the garden. For 2021 we installed a plastic mesh fence as the third layer to keep small rabbits out of the garden. So far it all seems to be working. We haven’t seen any critters in the garden yet this year.
Figure 20. Radish going to seed along with Lettuce
8. We have always tried to set aside Tomato and Pepper seeds from the previous year’s harvest to use in the following year’s planting. This year there was a shortage of seeds and we were very happy to have the ones we saved from last year. This year we plan to save a lot more seeds from many more varieties. We are letting a few of our plants go to seed in order to stockpile seeds for next year.
Figure 21. Organic pest control
9. Herrick Kimball has some very thorough and well documented Annual Reports on the Minibeds on Plastic system on his website. The important lessons to be learned from his yearly analysis make this a great asset.
10. Herrick’s website contains videos from other people who have used the Minibeds on Plastic system for their own garden. For anyone wishing to use the Minibeds on Plastic system these videos are very educational. Herrick developed this system for his upstate New York farm, but the videos show people in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma who are successfully using this system to produce wonderful gardens, most of them on a much larger scale than our suburban garden.
11. We have learned to be flexible and make changes to our garden every year. Becoming more self-reliant is not something that is accomplished in a single year. It is more similar to a long distance race. We keep making small, incremental changes to our system that compound year after year to move us forward in the direction of being more self-sufficient. We continue to add Minibeds and reorganize a bit every year.
Gardens are about growing your favorite foods, but these days they are also about providing food security for your family. Covid has taught us that the food supply chain is fragile and can be compromised and interrupted. You can provide you own food security and assure a supply of fresh fruits and vegetables for your family by growing your them yourselves.