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Michigan Ancient Garden Beds
Of the plat figured by Blois , the writer says:
They are found a short distance from Three Rivers, on one side of an oval prarie, surrounded by burr-oak plains. The prairie contains three hundred acres. The garden is judged to be half a mile in length by one-third in breadth, containing about one hundred acres, regularly laid out in beds running north and south, in the form of parallelograms, five feet in width and one hundred in length, and eighteen inches deep." The distinctive peculiarity of these beds is what Blois calls the " semi-lunar " head, at the extremity of each bed, separated from them by a path as represented.
Class 6, so far as my own inquiries warrant, represents the form and arrangement which is most common, viz: that of a series of parallel beds formed into blocks of two or more, alternating with other similar blocks placed at right angles to them. (See figures a, b and c.) The prevailing width of the bed is five or six feet, and that of the paths one and a-half to two feet. The length of the plats or blocks varies, the average being about twenty feet. Gardens of this kind were found by the early settlers, at Schoolcraft; the burr-oak plains at Kalamazoo; Toland's prairie; Prai-rie-Ronde, and elsewhere.
Farming
Page 7
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