2ndhalf, A bit late in chiming in, but here are two extracts from a book I wrote:-
On a very small scale you can use a shelter the same width as your garden beds if you follow the method of narrow bed gardening that is described towards the end of the Chapter entitled æ’¤reparing to Eat and Drink? The hens then manure the beds automatically. A run in front of the night shelter will let the hens have some freedom and help clear up weed growth at the same time. With such a system, and moving the unit daily, you can ignore the stocking density and give them maybe only one square yard of run each, but it is only practical to do this with very small numbers and fairly long garden beds because it is a labour intensive system. I would, in this case collect the eggs from outside the house, which I would keep very low, or even ark shaped. I would put the roosts furthest away from the pop hole exit to the open run, and across the line of the bed. This way the droppings would be clear of the shed and across the full width of the bed every time the shed was moved forward.
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I prefer a system of long narrow beds for vegetables rather than the conventional block idea. I like these beds to be narrow enough for me to straddle comfortably. As I have grown older this width has reduced from 4 feet to three and a half, and is likely to become narrower in the future. There are those that say you merely need to be able to reach the middle of the bed from the path on either side (including Cato in reference to an Asparagus bed, so these narrow beds are not a modern invention as many people believe) and that is fine if it suits you, but I have found that it is easier to be precise with the placing of seeds, thereby saving thinning time if I can straddle the bed when sowing. It also saves seed, but most seeds are extremely cheap compared with the price of a mature vegetable. If you are vertically disadvantaged as they say nowadays, and have short legs, you might well find that the distance you can comfortably straddle would give you too small an area of beds and you might have no alternative but to work from each side to the middle. Even four feet wide beds are too narrow for a wind pollinated crop like sweetcorn so if you use them for such crops you need to sow seed in at least two adjoining beds to assist pollination. I like the paths between the beds to be two and a half feet. I find this width comfortable to work with plenty of room to walk up and down, push a wheelbarrow, or handle a hoe. It also means that plants can be close to the edges of the beds and allowed to encroach on to the pathways. Other people like different widths, many advocating only two feet for the paths, or even a foot and a half. Again, personal preference is the guideline.
I like the idea of raising the beds, and although I have never edged them on the premise that edging is a harbour for slugs and snails, I might well do so as I get older and raise the beds quite high so that I do not have to bend so far to reach soil level. If you have a physical disability then this idea might also be beneficial for you, but edging beds could be a problem if you do not rigidly stick to the notion of not cultivating them, because you might be restricted to climbing on to them and hand digging, or risk running a garden cultivator up a ramp to them and possibly damaging the edging or having an accident. I find that within a couple of seasons the beds I use are slightly higher than the paths and convex shaped. If possible I cultivate with a graip from the paths. The beds are normally not walked upon so the soil does not become too compacted and they should be capable of being worked at almost any time of the year from the paths, although poorer quality land, or new beds may need the old-fashioned spade digging method. Cropping density can be extremely high and plant spacing juggled to provide the size of vegetable you need. You can even buy varieties of some vegetables that have been developed to suit this close spacing production, providing perhaps just two servings per plant.
I sometimes use the tractor to give the beds a quick stir up if a few of them need it at the same time, and the wide paths mean that the tractor wheels run on the paths. You have to make sure your tractor wheels are correctly spaced, of course, and your implement width correct. Removing some of the outside tines on a scarifier should suit, and that is what I do. You do need slightly more than the tractor length at one end of the beds if you intend to do this otherwise you cannot work the beds without running over them with the tractor. Obviously you could cultivate the beds whenever you want if you have cultivating equipment of the same width. The tractor with scarifier attached is extremely quick and gives a really good depth of cultivation.
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Hope they help. As for depth, go as deep as possible, or build the beds as high as possible. The more volume the roots of your plants have the better they will perform.
