Purple Pitchfork
  • Home
  • Podcast
  • About Chris
  • Farming Resources from Chris
  • Donate

Row Spacing and Bed Widths

3/9/2013

4 Comments

 
In my experience and observations, most vegetable growers base their row spacing on two factors:
  • Center-to-center wheel spacing on their tractors; and
  • Whether they are using a raised bed or flat bed system.


At Rock Spring Farm, we have a 60 inches center-to-center wheel spacing on all of our tractors. The Allis Chalmers G can be set to this width. This also means that most of our equipment also fits on, or is modular to, this spacing: our rototiller is 60 inches (which is a little too narrow), our tine weeder is 60 inches, and our drill is ten feet.

We've used a number of different row spacings in our thirteen years. We started off with the Eliot Coleman-recommended 3 12-inch or 2 24-inch rows. An equipment purchase the next year led us to work on 4 10-inch rows, which left the outer rows 30 inches apart. With this setup, we experienced quite a bit of disease pressure, and mechanical cultivation with anything other than a basket weeder was very difficult.

In 2005, we changed over to a system of 3 15-inch rows, and we have stayed with that ever since. This spacing has definitely improved our disease control by improving air flow, and it has made mechanical weed control much easier. We use our Buddingh basket weeder to cultivate either all three rows, or with an added sweep (purchased from Buddingh) to clean the middle row when we have crops on two rows.

When we stopped using soil blocks in 2009, we purchased a 2-row mechanical transplanter to replace our water wheel planter for every-day use. The new transplanter only plants two rows, so on transplanted crops we tightened up our in-row spacing by about 30% to maximize our productivity. Anne and Eric Nordell have done some in-depth analyses about planting more densely in the row to account for the wide-row spacings they used on their farm. The wider row spacing allows us to back the crops more densely in the row because we have plenty of air circulation; and the plant roots still have plenty of soil to scavenge in. See the illustrations in this online book to see how wide vegetable root systems are: http://goo.gl/S3kMF.

If I had it all to do over again, I would use a 72-inch tire spacing, and set my rows at 18 inches. My 30-inch 2-row spacing right now is too narrow to effectively hill potatoes. Further, my experience leads me to feel that the more dirt I can move, the more potential I have for effective weed mechanical weed control, and since that's such a key factor for yield, speed of harvest, and labor expenditures, it feels like the most critical thing to build an organic vegetable farming system around. However, the wheels on many older cultivating tractors won't adjust that wide without special spacers, which are available but which come with an additional hassle-factor.

4 Comments
Kevin Grove link
10/5/2015 07:43:15 am

I like to know what tools/systems people are using. But even more, I like to know what they WOULD do if they had it all to do over again. Thanks for sharing these details Chris. Perfect timing as I am contemplating changing all my equipment to a new spacing for future seasons.

Love your podcasts!

Reply
Chris Blanchard
10/8/2015 06:15:14 pm

Just glancing at this post again, I see that I could have maybe been clearer - I would run 3 rows at 18", so that if I was doing two rows I would have things spaced at 36". Glad you're enjoying the podcast!

Reply
Peter
3/29/2021 04:41:01 pm

Thank you for the good information.

Link is dead. can you please update. Thank you

Reply
MckinneyVia link
6/9/2022 08:34:48 pm

Awesome content. Thank you for sharing this wonderful information. It was very interesting.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Sponsors

    img_purple pitchfork_sponsor_vermont compost

    Archives

    2016
    2015

    2014
    2013
    2012
    2011

    Announcement
    Business Philosophy
    Business Strategy
    CSA
    Entrepreneurism
    Farm Equipment
    Farm Finances
    Farming Techniques
    Farm Labor
    Farm Systems
    Farm Wisdom
    Food Safety
    Government
    Health
    Irrigation
    Management
    Marketing
    Organic Certification
    Organic Farming
    Organization
    Pricing
    Records Management
    Scaling Up
    Value

    Picture

    RSS Feed

Picture
Purple Pitchfork is a project of Renewing the Countryside, a non-profit dedicated to rural revitalization and collaborative farmer education that serves as the home for these resources Chris Blanchard created.
Copyright © 2018, Purple Pitchfork. All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy