I like four-foot beds only if they have access from both sides. I think there are advantages to the width for certain crops like corn or squash.
I also have two foot beds, and I like those, too. I only access them from one side (though I have access through trellises on the other, and I pick from both sides on the beds that have my arches). I even plant one crop in the front and one in the back in those two foot beds. My current example is bush beans in front and sugar snap peas by the trellis in the back.
We are expecting our first “real-deal” cold front to move in tomorrow. There’s the possibility of some thunderstorms, and temperatures should drop throughout the day and head to the thirties overnight. We aren’t expecting frost or freeze, but I’m still a little worried about how the plants will handle the suddenness of the change.
In light of that, I did some harvesting today. I picked green beans to go in the fridge for later cooking, and the same variety of green beans that I have been letting go for seed. They’re not all dried down as I would prefer, but they’re on the way, and I wanted to keep them out of the rain. I’ve been told that this variety can soak up water in the drying pods and causes losses to the seed.
I also harvested all my sweet potatoes. It was not a good harvest at all considering all the work I did growing the slips and watering the plants all summer. I think the drought was just too much for me to combat. Most of the plants only produced one or two potatoes, and they weren’t large. Some didn’t produce any unless I just did a bad job of digging.
My most productivity actually came from the planter where I bedded the cuttings of mother potatoes for the slip production. I couldn’t bear to lose all those, so when they got big, I dumped them into a hollow of a mulched bed in our backyard where it was easier for me to water. They had a big head start on the garden, and spent much of their early life in a self-watering planter. The roots from that small area (maybe 3 square feet) are the ones in the cookie sheet at the top of the picture. They just edged out all my garden plantings combined in ounces. I ended up with just shy of ten pounds total. They’re in my oven (not turned on) with a dish of hot water for humidity in order to cure now for a couple of weeks or more.
I sure hope it does rain tomorrow. We need it badly.