I have a vegetable garden in Midwestern Northern Illinois. It is organic, has raised beds, and I am using double digging techniques (actually bastard trenching), along with French Intensive concepts. I broke ground in December of 2009, and I hope that if you are a beginning or struggling gardener that this blog will be an encouragement to you.
, and size of your vegetables. For each 4 square feet of room in my beds I have worked in two wheel barrow loads of manure. I am in the city so I can't compost it, above ground, both because of the odors it would cause, and the volume that I am applying. I bury each pickup load as it arrives. Even with the freshest manure there is no odor when I am done. I am starting to get some very good soil. This is my third season. It has been a little heavy going. Even though we have had very little rain, the beds are quite saturated with water. If I didn't have such high percentage of organic matter I wouldn't have been able to work them up. They say that the organic matter absorbs seven times it weight in water. No matter how hard the rainfall I don't lose a drop in runoff.
