When it comes to ensuring your backyard garden thrives—no matter its size—the way you plant your crops is crucial. While many homeowners adopt the practice of planting their starters in holes throughout their designated garden, this isn’t the only way to do it. In fact, trench gardens can be much more effective depending on what you want to grow. Consider these noteworthy benefits of building a trench garden in your yard rather than a traditional one.
Better Soil Enrichment
First and foremost, a trench garden provides better soil enrichment and higher nutrition concentration for your crops. As a process of planting dirt in pre-dug trenches rather than holes, trench gardening makes it possible to add layers of compost or manure to the soil mixture. Not only does this improve the texture of your soil, but it also gives your plants—especially root vegetables like potatoes—more immediate access to those nutrients. This can help them grow much more effectively and increase your crop yield.
Improved Moisture Retention
Trench gardens are also typically better at retaining essential moisture for their plants. With the additional layers worked into the ground, there’s more room for moisture to be absorbed and sit in wait. As such, your garden will require less watering to stay sufficiently moist, and your plants will always have access to the amount of water they need to thrive.
Planting Consistency
An additional benefit of building a trench garden is the consistency it can bring to your planting rows. When you plant your vegetables or leafy greens in holes, there’s always the risk of accidentally placing some seeds deeper into the Earth than others; this can make it difficult to tell whether certain plants need more watering than others. It can also lead to varying growth rates, which increases the difficulty of tending to your garden and harvesting crops at the right time. With trenches, every seed gets planted at the same depth and along the same layer of fertilized soil, ensuring they all get the exact same nutrients.
Reduced Labor
Above all, trench gardens reduce the amount of manual labor needed for tending your garden considerably, especially for those who want to keep larger ones. You won’t need to water your crops as often, nor will you need to spread fertilizer every few weeks; this garden format already lends itself well to proper nutrition distribution and growth. However, if you’re going to plant a large trench garden, consider using a skid steer trencher attachment to ensure properly sized channels for multiple plants at once.
Trench gardens are a great strategy for maximizing the health and output of your vegetable garden. Make sure you consider it carefully when planting additional crops in your yard—you might find that your plants take more to this method than others you’ve tried.
