Since 1986, our method of farming has incorporated a system of raised beds, drip irrigation, plastic mulch, and fabric row-cover tunnels. These aids have served us well for frost protection, weed control, irrigation, enhanced microclimates, moisture retention, pest protection, and insect control for between 1,000 and 3,000 feet of warm and cool-season crops.

Tractor-drawn equipment is available to install most of the components of our system. When we decided to begin using it, however, we had already purchased a fairly expensive walk-behind rotary tiller. Rotary tillers are not designed to install plastic mulch. So we decided to raise the beds, lay the drip line and plastic mulch, put in the hoops, and roll out the row covers by hand. Although it has been very labor intensive over the last 20 years, we're pleased by our decision and would not consider buying machinery to do the work.

One of the principal reasons—besides stubbornness—that we've been satisfied with our self-designed machinery-less system is that it gives us flexibility. This past growing season we had 800 feet of muskmelon, watermelon, tomatoes, flowers for drying, eggplant, and bell peppers that utilized the entire system, from raised beds to fabric row tunnels. But we also had 200 feet of tomatoes, onions, and brassicas that dispensed with the raised beds and plastic mulch. With these crops we used straw mulch, rather than plastic, over the drip line. Also, for the first time, we put row tunnel over 150 feet of direct-seeded squash and over transplanted onions. Our idea with the squash was to protect the emerging squash from the ravages of a cucumber beetle infestation we'd experienced the two previous summers. But the squash bed is not raised, doesn't have plastic mulch, and will be irrigated using overhead sprinklers. The onions are in the same kind of bed. But in their case the hoops and row covers kept the rabbits away from the onions. With some crops, such as lettuce and beets, we use hoops and chicken wire. Deer can rip through row covers but not chicken wire.

We also like the non-mechanical approach because it allows us to reuse much of the material a second and even a third season. For years we've reused the fabric row cover for two to three seasons. After it's too shredded for use over the hoops, it can be used again to protect crops such as beans, grapes, or strawberries from late frosts. I'm embarrassed to admit that it has been only in the last few seasons that we've discovered we can reuse some of the black plastic mulch for a second and occasionally a third season.

How does our hand-operated system come together?

Like all agricultural endeavors, there's really no starting or finishing point. But our first spring task is to pick up last season's plastic mulch. There was a time, before we began reusing it, that I'd pick up mulch in the fall if there was time. But if you want to reuse the plastic, it's best to let the winter do its break down work on the melon vines and other plant material before you try to pick up hundreds of feet of three-foot wide plastic mulch in one piece.

Regardless, picking up mulch is messy, painstaking work. I'm ashamed to say that Janice, my gardening partner of many years, does most of it. She has more patience. As she picks it up, she puts it in a feed sack and makes sure that it's more or less piled into the bag so it will come out end-first and in an orderly, untangled way. When the bag is full she labels it by noting how many pieces are in the bag and, roughly, how long they are.

Row covers give the Kings' melons a head start during chilly Minnesota springs.

When the plastic mulch is being removed it's easy to think, Ugh! What am I doing with all this disgusting petro by-product?

After all these years that still remains a valid question for me. The primary reason is that under the mulch is a weed free, moist, and biologically active zone of soil that has required no tillage since the plastic was applied five months earlier. And under that plastic there has been little or no soil compaction and the soil quality is superb. Additionally, we provided warm season crops to our local markets when only petroleum intensive imports were available.

So, we proceed. Our garden is laid out in 14 300-foot rows. The rows are largely permanent and set up on six-foot centers. With our crop rotation it is rare that a row would get raised and covered for two consecutive years. So, after picking up plastic, our next job is to till and raise the beds. Often a bed to be raised one season will have been fallow the previous season, and this type of rotation often lets quack grass creep into fallow rows. Therefore, the bed to be raised may have perennial grass in it. Last year, we raised and covered a 75-foot fairly grassy raspberry row. The plastic held the grass in check nicely.

The tools for raising a bed are simple. We use our garden tiller to make a pass or two through the two- to three-foot-wide bed. Then, using a pickup truck or handcart, we generously compost the bed and once again till to incorporate the compost. Next, using a steel rake or a three-pronged hoe, we pull a few inches of soil from one side of the bed into the middle. That leaves a mound of dirt four or five inches high and as long as the bed. We repeat the process on the other side of the bed by raking more dirt to the center. When we're done the mound in the center may be 10 inches high.

The next step is to go back with the rake and gently level the top of that raised mound. Depending on how much dirt we've mounded, we should end up with a fairly flat bed between 14 and 20 inches wide and about four to six inches high.

Now we lay two lengths of drip line onto the surface of the bed. We use the thin-walled "T" tape. Some years we don't need to use any new line. We just buy splices and patch the older lines where the pocket gophers have bitten into it. We connect only one of those lines for widely spaced crops such as melons. The second line there is a backup. For peppers, flowers, and tomatoes, since there are two rows in each bed, we connect both lines.

If we do use new drip line, we put the spool on a pipe and mount the pipe on our garden cart. Keeping the cart stationary at one end of the row, we walk the line to the other end.

Now we lay the plastic if it's needed. If we are going to use old plastic, we anchor the end with a little dirt at the beginning of the row. One person pulls 10 or 15 feet out of the bag, then one of us stretches and holds the plastic taut while the other anchors it with a shovel and dirt. Once the two ends of that section are anchored, the stretcher finds two or three strategic spots along the length of the section and stretches the plastic as wide as possible. The edges of those spots are then anchored. Now both people can lightly anchor the remaining edges of the entire, nicely tightened, section. This process is repeated the whole length of the bed. A machine couldn't do much better of a job.

As we go we remove any debris—cornstalks, broccoli roots, particularly noxious grass rhizomes—that prevents the smooth laying of the plastic. We also regularly adjust the drip line so it's tight and is lying where we want it.

We've noticed that old plastic, with its randomly placed holes, requires a little less irrigation. An inch of rainfall will most likely soak a bed covered with somewhat tattered old plastic. Almost everything runs off new plastic.

If you're using new plastic, put a pipe through the cardboard tube on which the plastic is rolled. Then two people can roll out sections of it. The same tightening and anchoring system is used as with old plastic.

After the plastic we put in the hoops. Ours are made from the wire that rural electric utilities used for overhead transmission lines. We picked up a lot of the stuff inexpensively when the electrical co-op went underground with its wire. We cut the hoops three to four feet long with a bolt cutter. Tomatoes and broccoli need big hoops. Melons can get by with shorter ones.

Tim and Jan are in the process of removing the fabric covering the tomatoes. They put straw mulch in place before removing the fabric.

In the bed the hoops are set two feet apart. The ends are poked through the edges of the plastic mulch and into the ground.

We transplant seedlings and put the row cover on as one step. We'll put out 15 or 20 feet of transplants and then immediately cover them with row cover. With new plastic we use a sharp dibble stick to poke holes for the transplants. Before we transplant, though, we like to run our tiller along the edges of the bed to loosen the soil. Having loose soil to anchor the edges of the row cover makes life easier than having to scoop compacted soil with a shovel for 300 feet.

That loose soil is also nice for putting little dirt collars around each transplant. The soil protects any delicate leaves that would otherwise come in contact with the plastic. On a sunny day the plastic heats up rapidly and can dry leaves out.

When we come to the end of a piece of row cover, we attach it to a hoop with clothespins. The beginning of the next piece can be joined at that hoop as well.

It's sort of sad to say, but everything we've ever grown here in Minnesota—from weeds to melons—grows better under this man-made cover than it does out in the open. It's warmer. It's wetter. The light is diffuse. It protects plants from wind and provides four degrees of frost protection. As a consequence we don't remove the fabric cover until we have to. For melons we wait until the first female flowers show. On tomatoes and peppers we wait until the plants push against the fabric.

Once we take the fabric off we put it right into bags. The sun is hard on it. Once again, we write on the bags how much fabric is in the bags and what the quality of the fabric is.