With the width of a max farmbot, conceivably one could build two 30” beds and still have 18” in between to get to down the center. Besides the obvious reason of losing more gardening space, is there any reason this couldn’t work?
The concept is completely sound.
I am working with the local robotics club in order to develop such a system.
We are looking at the two parallel (double-reach) beds with a walkway down the centre.
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Are you also going to build up the beds higher, so as to reduce the necessity to bend over as much? That’s my thought anyway…
Hi Anthony,
If that questions was directed at me, here’s the (too-long) answer);
No we are not looking at raising the beds.
The intended location of the Farmbot’s is in Queensland Australia, and we are in drought.
The low-rain conditions have defined our context. As such the job of farmbot, in our locality and climate is to import, and kick-start soil microbiology.
Just for your situational awareness, drought for us means 50mm (2") of rain in 12mths.
Some of the background;
We have had very dry conditions for over three years.
We are living off of tank water (rain-water tanks connected to the house), and not town water, basically off-grid. This means we must be water savvy.
A few of the soil deficiencies we have to address are:
- Low Sodium,
- High Potassium,
- Low Boron,
- Low Silicon,
- Our Protozoa life is at 40% of the lowest desired number,
And our soils are not well draining.
Therefore our context is this:
we need to regularly and efficiently import nutrients and soil-life.
We will use the Farmbot to fertigate in a 3-stage process:
- introduce moisture, (an efficient watering program),
- introduce fertility, (Farmbot will fertigate with a liquid solution of Worm Tea, Seaweed Tea, and Fish Emulsion)
- sustain ground cover, (not necessarily fruit and vegetable crops, broadleaf cover crops and short native grasses will also be used).
And why does all this matter in response to your question about raised beds?
We don’t want raised beds because we want to move the Farmbot annually/biannually in order to increase soil life of the whole garden bed area, not just the raised garden bed itself.
When the Farmbots is moved off of the rejuvenated garden bed, we will then use it to plant additional, different and exciting crops to expand our crop diversity.
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