Growing vegetables in raised beds

best for highest production and least work? hydroponics?

I really like the old fashioned dry land planting with mulch, it produces well, requires min work once in place and allows me to plant anything and everything I want in the garden space.

I was able to find for free online, the biointensive gardening "Bible", "How To Grow More Food Than You Ever thought Possible On Less Land Than You Imagined" by John Jeavons. I would be happy to send you the .pdf file. I can not remember where I found it. Just send me a Private Message that you want the .pdf file and I will send it.

Greenshield

I started off the traditional route, tilling the soil every year. Dumping compost and digging it in. Weeding constantly, watering daily. Every time you turn over the soil you mess with it's natural balance of bacteria.
As I've learned more about soil health I've gone to copying a forest. No till, deep mulch.
Pull back the mulch and plant where you want. No weeds to pull, and a lot less watering.
It doesn't produce more but it's a hell of a lot less work which means you can have twice as much land producing with the same labour input.

I do have a couple of raised beds but they're more for cold frames. One is so I can plant where a tree used to be without digging out the stump.

biointensive gardening works pretty good, but were i am with very sandy soil, i need like 100 dump truck loads of compost or manure. I would love to do hydroponics but would need a another building for that.

My raised beds are RAISED beds, not just raised slightly off the ground! All my beds are at waist high, I still get weeds on them but they are weeds from tree seeds and not the usual dandelions and other grasses which take up so much time.

I think you need a mixture, I have raised beds, containers for herbs and gingers, (things I don't want spreading too far), a new wicking bed and I have just taken ownership of an IBC which will soon be turned into an Aquaponics set up. I think for the best crop with the least work you should stick to trees, they water themselves, don't need staking out and you get fruit from them every year without any additional work. plus you can cut them back for firewood.

The most amount of work I have is with the vanilla vines, growing them is easy, getting them to flower is not a problem but hand pollenating them and then the eight month wait on the vine followed by three weeks of drying at different temperatures and the next eight months of conditioning is far more work than they are worth!

My vegetables will be grown in the aquaponics system, which is pretty much waist high as well and there are no weeds and no need for mulching and they use about 70% less water than conventional dirt farming. No high concentrations or need to change water over as you find in hydroponics plus you get to eat fish! All organic as well. There is a requirement for pumping water around the system and also pumping air into the system so it is not free by any means.

We just finished our raised beds this september... a lot of work.

They are on the south side of the house and get sun even in the winter months (so you know they'll have lots of sun/heat in the summer). They are protected from the north and westerly winds as well.

http://s877.beta.photobucket dot com/user/Dangphool/story/411

We'll have to see if we can grow anything as its our first time gardening.

I am a big fan of raised beds as we have lots and lots of kikuyu and the raised beds allow me to keep one step ahead of it.
For larger veggies like corn, pumpkin, veg spaghetti etc I just pile manure, mushroom compost, mulch etc straight on the ground and plant straight into that, but all the smaller stuff goes into the raised beds.

I use to till the entire field. Now its all raised beds with no side support. I plan on doing one area about 3 sq acres in Permaculture, seem like a good idea working with nature, having more land producing food.

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that are modeled on the relationships found in natural ecologies.

Permaculture is sustainable land use design. This is based on ecological and biological principles, often using patterns that occur in nature to maximise effect and minimise work. Permaculture aims to create stable, productive systems that provide for human needs, harmoniously integrating the land with its inhabitants. The ecological processes of plants, animals, their nutrient cycles, climatic factors and weather cycles are all part of the picture. Inhabitants’ needs are provided for using proven technologies for food, energy, shelter and infrastructure. Elements in a system are viewed in relationship to other elements, where the outputs of one element become the inputs of another. Within a Permaculture system, work is minimised, “wastes” become resources, productivity and yields increase, and environments are restored. Permaculture principles can be applied to any environment, at any scale from dense urban settlements to individual homes, from farms to entire regions and social systems.

The first recorded modern practice of permaculture as a systematic method was by Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer in the 1960s, but the method was scientifically developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications.

The word permaculture is described by Mollison as a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, and permanent culture.

The intent is that, by training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals can design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth's ecosystems.

While originating as an agro-ecological design theory, permaculture has developed a large international following. This "permaculture community" continues to expand on the original ideas, integrating a range of ideas of alternative culture, through a network of publications, permaculture gardens, intentional communities, training programs, and internet forums. In this way, permaculture has become a form of architecture of nature and ecology as well as an informal institution of alternative social ideals.

-- From Wikipedia, Permaculture --

Permaculture still has a bit of a negative hippy connotation about it though, I still think of permies as having dreadlocks and chunky knit sweaters and smoking roll-up cigarettes, even though most of my garden is based around a permaculture idea and my future expansion plans are also based on many of the principles.

I certainly don't have dreadlocks and I don't own a sweater but I can't get past the predudice!

A lot of the 'new' things creeping into gardens, such as raised beds, water harvesting and wicking beds have been around since the 70s. Their heritage is never mentioned and they are usually sexed up on a TV program and introduced as a new idea. Well, whatever gets the message across I suppose.

I am thinking of ferrocement to make some waist high wicking beds, something else that has been around since the 70s with plenty of negative connotations but something that I think will be great for growing crops in.