Planting in Beds

However you decide to organize your garden and however you decide to loosen your soil, planting in beds instead of individual rows is one of the most powerful actions you can take for the health of your plants because it consolidates your paths around blocks of your plants instead of having walking rows on top of each one.

Keeping beds with consolidated paths around them provides much larger areas of loosened soil for your plants and is the easiest way to make sure at least that block of bed soil around each set of your plants doesn’t get compacted by foot traffic.

Even if you decide only to till and not do any deeper loosening or mounding of your soil, planting in beds—and consolidating your paths to the areas around your beds—will at least ensure that your plants’ growing areas remain as loose as possible, only being compacted by the rain. Knowing what you now know about the needs of your plants’ roots and their extent, you’ll likely avoid even putting your weight on your hand while reaching across a bed. You definitely won’t stand or walk in bed, especially once you’ve put in the hard work to loosen its soil.

But how big of beds?