A planted bed keeps every plant within arm's reach of a path, edge, or walkable row.
Promising · suboptimal if ignored → advise
How it works
A comfortable arm's reach is ~0.6 m (the same basis the draw-time reach nudge uses). Ground past that from any access line can only be tended by standing on the soil, compacting it. So a reach-from-edge bed wider than reach-from-both-sides (~1.2 m) is laid out as <=1.2 m planting strips separated by ~0.5 m paths; a field is worked from walkable rows ~0.75 m apart, not one solid block. Which model applies is read from the bed's declared structure: raised / in_ground / container are edge-reached (strips), field is walked (rows).
The evidence
Evidence: confirmed against 4 sources in the research-based literature.
the 4 sources
Iowa State Univ. Extension, Yard & Garden FAQ, raised bed size (read 2026-07-21): 'Beds accessible on both sides can be 3 to 4 feet wide'; one-sided 'the maximum width should be 1 1/2 to 2 feet (i.e., approximately arm's reach)'; equipment pathways '~3' wide'.
Univ. of Minnesota Extension, Raised bed gardens (read 2026-07-21): 'the reach of your arm is generally a good metric ... If you can access both sides, the bed can be up to five feet wide.'
Field/row model: sweet-corn row spacing '30 to 36 inches ... so you can hoe, mulch, and harvest without breaking brace roots' (Univ. of Maryland / UMN / Illinois Extension, read 2026-07-21). Path 18-24 in foot-traffic minimum (garden extension consensus).
Container upper bound: the largest common vegetable container is a half-whiskey-barrel / 15-20 gal grow bag ~0.66 m across (Harvest to Table, harvesttotable.com, and the Old Farmer's Almanac container-size chart; read 2026-07-21). 75 cm is that with a small margin; past it the ground is a raised or in-ground bed.
Change history
Every change to this rule is one commit. This is what the project's version history records — the date and the reason — not a summary of it.
- another rule here + another rule here: reach threshold 120 -> 122 cm, the source's own 4-ft ceiling
- Corpus: another rule here verified - the maintainer read the bed-width and row-spacing sources
- Corpus: another rule here names the reach nudge in words, so no rule code reaches the reader
- reach-aware fill access rule for large beds (D-141 phase 1)
Cite this page
Milpa Gardens. "A planted bed keeps every plant within arm's reach of a path, edge, or walkable row." Evidence grade: Promising. https://milpa.garden/rules/planted-bed-keeps-plant-within-arm-s/
A garden-planning corpus: every claim states its evidence grade and links its sources on the page. Cite it with the grade, and add the date you read it.