There are rules to follow when designing an area. These rules are concerned with orientation, zoning, and interactions. There are whole sets of principles which govern why we put things together and why things work.
— Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture, 1991
TAKING THE TIME to make a clear design when setting up a market garden will go a long way toward determining how efficiently many day-to-day chores will be carried out. The aim is to organize the different working spaces—inside and outside—so that the work flow will be as efficient, practical, and ergonomic as possible. The first step toward achieving this is to get a sense of all the fixed elements needed in a market garden (storage facilities, water reservoirs, greenhouses, windbreaks, etc.). Then it becomes a matter of drawing a map of the overall garden, laying out all the elements in the optimal location with regard to one another.
Tending crops full time involves a lot of ferrying between different buildings and gardens. Without proper planning of the space, the walking distances between the tool shed, garden, washing station, and storage area can translate into serious downtime. Moreover, visits to the bathroom, forgotten tools, or missing harvest bins are events that happen almost every day. If every trip means halting work for ten to fifteen minutes, imagine how much working time is lost over the course of a day, a week, or a season (or thirty years...). To avoid these common losses of time make sure that the immovable elements—tool shed, washing station, cold room, and bathroom—are located as close to the gardens as possible. In an ideal setting, these would all be together under one roof in a building located in the middle of all the garden plots.
The next step is to plan the working area for the washing, handling, and storing of the vegetables. This space should be as pleasant and comfortable as possible since many hours each week are spent there. Visiting other vegetable farms, regardless of the type or size, and studying how they organize their work spaces is a great way to get good ideas about how to design the best possible setup. More often than not, clever design ideas are scale neutral, which is to say that they will work well at any scale.
We’ve laid out the gardens so that all plots are equidistant from a multifunctional building that houses the washing, processing, and storage areas. This setup maximizes day-to-day productivity by minimizing onsite foot traffic.
Washing Station Setup: A Few Tips
A simple and economical washing station consists of two tubs positioned side by side, each with its own garden hose nozzle. Ensure that there is adequate water pressure so that both nozzles can work simultaneously. The drain pipes should be designed in such a way that you can drain them at the same time without creating an overflow. The standard height for work surfaces is about 36 inches, but installing the tubs at different heights to accommodate workers of different sizes can increase comfort and efficiency. Covering the walls with waterproof materials in an indoor washing station will prevent the growth of mold. The water used for washing vegetables must be potable and drained in an environmentally responsible manner.
Design your washing station area with enough space to accommodate a large table for weighing and bagging the vegetables. A separate area for handling deliveries and assembling CSA boxes also makes the job easier. Good shelves are needed to store bags, elastic bands, and other market equipment. Movable tables come in handy when you want to move the job outdoors in nice weather.
Be sure to include a sink with a soap dispenser for hand washing. Sanitary norms generally require that hot water be available for hand washing.
Lighting and windows are also very important: you don’t want the station to feel dark and dreary. The floor should be smooth and easy to clean. The ideal floor is a level cement slab with one or more drains.
Harvest containers should be easy to stack for compact storage.
Make sure you can load the delivery truck without having to lift the harvest containers one by one. Either build the loading dock to the height of the truck bed or build a moveable loading ramp. In any case, design your space to allow for work with a dolly and containers that stack easily.
The pathways in our gardens are wide enough to allow the passage of a wheelbarrow or to work in a crouching position without damaging the adjacent bed. Our beds are oriented according to the natural slope of our site to encourage surface drainage.
Standardizing the Garden Layout
Most mixed vegetable farmers I know subdivide their fields into several smaller sized plots called “field blocks.” Once the field is laid out in a compartmentalized manner, managing the complexity of growing many different crops at once becomes easier. Instead of growing ten acres, you’re growing ten different one-acre plots that you can then handle individually. Standardizing the field blocks to be of equal size, shape, and length is a very effective way to manage different aspects of production, namely crop rotation, calculating soil amendments, and production planning.
We were fortunate to have learned the importance of standardizing growing spaces before settling permanently in Saint-Armand. In our garden, all our beds are 48 inches wide from center to center: this allows for a 30-inch band for the raised beds and an 18-inch band for pathways. The raised beds are narrow enough to step over without trampling them, and the pathways are wide enough to accommodate wheelbarrow traffic. Because more and more market gardeners are now growing on 30-inch beds, most of the new tools and equipment tailored for market gardening are developed to this standard width. When considering growing without a tractor, I highly suggest adopting a 30-inch bed system.
All our beds are 100 feet long. This length is adapted to our particular production scale and should not be considered as a standard. Other gardeners may opt for beds that are 30 feet long, 45 feet long, or any other length. The thing to keep in mind is that all beds should be of a uniform length as this renders all tarps, irrigation lines, floating row covers, and other equipment to be uniform as well. Materials cut to standardized lengths are versatile and interchangeable—and ultimately you end up needing less of them overall. Anyone who has spent time rummaging around for a piece of row cover cut to the right size will easily understand how useful this arrangement can be. Having standard lengths also allows us to treat the bed as its own unit of measure in our annual planning process, replacing the traditional per-acre calculations of yield. As a side note, we no longer make our fertilizer amendment calculations in tons per acre, but in wheelbarrows per bed.
Furthermore, our beds are grouped into equal-sized areas that we refer to interchangeably as “gardens” or “plots.” The end result is that our growing space is divided into ten plots, each measuring 65 feet by 112 feet, each of them having sixteen beds that contain vegetables belonging to either the same botanical family or that have similar fertilization requirements (see chapter on fertility). The garden length of 112 feet is equal to one bed length (100 feet) plus 6 feet on either end to allow for passage of a harvest cart. Again these plot sizes and their numbers best accommodate our site and growing needs and could be different for another market garden. It’s the uniformity between them that is such a great design practice.
Locating the Greenhouse and Hoophouses
Hoophouses and a greenhouse are indispensable in any market gardening operation, as they extend the growing season. Greenhouses are distinguished from hoophouses (also called tunnels) in that the latter are usually unheated (or minimally heated), have only one layer of plastic, and do not require electricity. The greenhouse serves as a plant nursery in the spring while hoophouses are used for season extension. In summer, both are used to grow lucrative heat-loving crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The placement of greenhouses and hoophouses should be based on the following considerations.
Since the hoophouses and greenhouses are visited several times a day in the spring and fall to control ventilation, it is best to install them near other frequently visited facilities. In the case of a heated greenhouse, it also needs to be accessible by vehicle for fuel supply.
A north-south orientation is better for light distribution inside the buildings when the growing season is in full swing. However, an east-west orientation will capture maximum sun from September to March, when the sun is lower on the horizon. When using hoophouses for season extension, east-west is the ideal orientation.
If you plan to build structures parallel to each other, be aware that buildings may cast shadows on neighboring structures when days are short. To eliminate this problem, it is important to space the buildings one building-width apart, which incidentally is also necessary for snow removal between the hoophouses.
A market gardener should never underestimate the damage that deer are capable of doing. I have seen thousands of dollars worth of crops devoured in a single night, so do not take this lightly. If deer and other four-legged nuisances are a threat in your area, the best way to protect your growing space is to surround it with metal fencing six feet high. This solution is expensive, but effective.
When starting out a market garden or when renting land, electric fencing is a more suitable option as it is portable and more affordable. Other gardeners have often talked to me about using polypropylene mesh nets as a cheaper alternative to metal fencing, and it might be worth checking this out. As far as I know, the material is light, resistant to ultraviolet rays, and easy to install and move around. I am not sure how well it stands up to accumulated snow, however—this is something to investigate.
Finally, there is one solution that has never let us down: our faithful farm dog. Because he runs free and sleeps outside, he is a proven expert at keeping deer away from our gardens—even when we can spot over a dozen of them in our neighbor’s field. Of course, barking in the night can be a nuisance, but this solution, besides providing incredible companionship, only requires a modest investment: a doghouse and some dog food.
One of the most debilitating climatic features for vegetable production is heavy winds that blow continuously on the crops. Strong winds cause direct stress to plants, lower the ambient temperature, and dry out the soil. Given that prevailing winds almost always blow in the same direction, it is important to reduce the likelihood of damage by installing a windbreak.
A windbreak can slow the wind speed over a distance of about 10 times its height. This creates a protected zone with more favorable climatic conditions.
A windbreak can be made of living plants (hedgerows, shrubs, or trees) or artificial materials (fencing, synthetic netting). The advantages of synthetic windbreaks are that they can be built quickly and don’t take up much room. However, they are usually only six feet high and last only a few seasons. Natural windbreaks take much longer to install but are less expensive, taller, and aesthetically pleasing. Trees, shrubs, and hedges also increase biodiversity and encourage insectivorous birds and insects, which in turn reduce the number of insect pests in the garden. Specific plants around the edges of the windbreak might also attract different pollinating and predatory insects. Although these effects might be difficult to quantify, establishing natural windbreaks will add additional ecological niches to the garden habitat.
Choosing between a natural and artificial windbreak is not a mutually exclusive decision. On a newly established garden located on a windy site, it might be a good idea to implement both routes, side by side, at least temporarily, to get the best of both worlds.
An irrigation system is an absolute necessity for growing crops on a commercial scale. Unpredictable rainfall, rigid seeding schedules, and the need for precise crop calculations all make access to steady and abundant water essential for a successful market garden. The main purpose of irrigation is to ensure optimal germination rates for direct-seeded crops and to provide sufficient moisture in the ground for transplanted seedlings. Irrigation can also be used for crops that require a steady supply of water and, obviously, when there is a drought. A good irrigation system should be flexible and adaptable to the specific needs of an intensive market garden.
A synthetic windbreak can be an effective solution against spring gusts while your natural windbreak is still growing.
On our farm, we favor overhead sprinklers for most of our irrigation needs. Another option, drip irrigation, uses water a lot more efficiently (since it travels slowly and directly to the targeted plants’ root zone), but we find that this approach is too labour intensive. Having to remove the lines before each hoeing is a nuisance. We therefore only use drip irrigation in the greenhouse, hoophouses, and for the crops we grow under plastic mulch, where water is sure to be needed.
Since our watering needs are precise, we require sprinklers that can sprinkle in narrow bands and opted for a low-flow sprinkler that uses a low-pressure pump (about 35 psi). These micro-sprinklers are lightweight, and their plastic nozzles sit on a 4-foot stainless steel rod attached to a 1-inch polyethylene (Carlon) pipe via a quick coupling. Setting them up and taking them down is quick and uncomplicated, and thus moving them from one plot to the next is quite simple. With the help of an irrigation distributor, we designed our system so that one garden (sixteen beds of one hundred feet in length) can be irrigated by two lines, each one having four sprinklers spaced twenty feet apart on the line. The nozzles of our sprinklers are set to cover a diameter of about forty feet, therefore watering eight beds at a time.
A flexible pipe with quick-connect fittings allows us to move irrigation lines to any pathway in our gardens. With two people working together, moving and installing one of them is a 10-minute job.
Our irrigation water comes from a pond and travels through a 2-inch main line, which surrounds our ten gardens, each of which have 2 ball valves that can supply sprinkler lines. All of our fittings are CamLock couplers (like the ones used by firefighters), which allow us to rapidly connect and disconnect the lines from the valves. Our sprinkler lines have identical couplers at each end, with connections being made by inserting a connecting plug. This enables the lines to be moved without having to point them in a specific direction.
With the help of a technician, we made sure that the pump and water lines would be the proper size to irrigate three plots at the same time (i.e., a total of six water lines running at once). Since each of the six water lines has four sprinklers, we needed to buy twenty-four of them. At maximum flow rate, all of our gardens can be watered within two days in the event of a drought. We also have two extra water lines with smaller nozzles that can spray a 16-foot diameter or, in our case, four beds at a time. One of these lines (100 feet long) has twenty-four mini-sprinklers that uniformly distribute large quantities of water in a short period of time. We use these mini-sprinklers to keep all direct-seeded beds moist. In sunny weather, we can turn them on for 10-minute stints, three or four times a day.
A word about water pumps. It’s helpful to know that pumps are designed to push water over long distances but not to pull it. Therefore, it is best to install one as close to the water reservoir as possible. On our site, the water reservoir in our adjacent woodlot is located 600 feet away from our building. Although the distance is considerable, we opted for an electric pump even if it necessitated spending big money to transport electricity over such a long distance. As a result, we are able to irrigate at the flip of a switch from right inside the tool shed. That was an investment we never regretted.
I should mention the importance of installing a sediment filter on the pump. Failing to do so will result in nozzles getting clogged with small debris, causing them to abruptly stop functioning. This usually happens when you’re assuming that all is fine, and irrigating for long hours without paying attention.... Planning for an easily accessible discharge valve is also important. You’ll need this when running just one sprinkler line, drip tapes, or when simply wanting to water with a hose connected to the main line. This relief valve will keep the main line from exploding because of excess pressure.
Most crops require an average of about 1¼ inches of water each week. Rain gauges are useful for measuring rainfall, ensuring uniformity, and calculating the required sprinkling time.
