Lazy bed



Lazy bed (ainneor or iompú, feannagan ) is a traditional method of arable cultivation. Rather like cord rig cultivation, parallel banks of ridge and furrow are dug by spade although lazy beds have banks that are bigger, up to 2.5 m in width, with narrow drainage channels between them. It was used in southern parts of Britain from the post-Roman period until the post-medieval period, and across much of Ireland and Scotland until the 19th century.

The name of the practice may derive from “lazy root”, an English nickname for the potato that was often grown in lazy beds.

Although it is largely extinct today, it is still found in parts of the Hebrides and the west of Ireland. In these places, the method used is normally to lift up sods of peat and apply desalinated seaweed fertiliser to improve the ground. Potatoes were commonly grown in this way in Ireland until the early nineteenth century. Research has reported that the abandonment of this method exacerbated the later Great Famine in Ireland.