Topic: Raised beds

[kGarden]

every 5 years in the rotation the bed becomes a compost heap.

I like that idea :)

Surrounding the beds with wooden boards seems,  to me,  like a waste of time and money (no offence meant to those who do .   kGarden,  your beds look very smart.)

problem I had was I could not plant the shoulders of the beds effectively, so wasted quite a lot of space on the width - given the beds are 4' wide I reckon I might have wasted getting on for 6" on each side (compared to have boards)#

I'm not a smart, neat & tidy sort of person ... but I know there are lots of people who are! and "looking nice" would be high on their list of priorities, if not #1 even ... which is fair enough.  Mine do look much smarter now, and its nice that people admire them, but it wasn't my primary consideration :)

Same thing, for me, using railway sleepers to edge raised beds.  Fair enough if someone needs them raising to waist height as the sides will need strength to hold back the soil, but for beds only raise a few inches sleepers are at least 6" wide, so that's a foot from both sides of the bed.  After 4 beds the sleeper edging, alone, has used up the space that could have been a 5th bed ...

[Garden Manager]

Raised beds don't have to be that deep, unless you suffer flooding have particularly bad ground, or want to grow very long root crops!.

I was listening to a recent Gardeners Question Time the other day and someone was asking advice on cultivating and improving a very deep raised bed (i forget the actual dimensions but i think it was something like a metre high/deep and had been filled entirely with good topsoil which had apparently 'gone bad' and was causing problems. The upshot was that such a bed firstly didn't need to be that deep, but if it had to be it shouldn't have been filled entirely with topsoil as most plants wouldn't need topsoil that deep. The problems had arisen because the lower levels had gone sour and turned to subsoil and the gardener was advised to remove the top layer, add compost and refill, to then be able to ignore the lower levels and concentrate cultivation on the uppermost soil by improving that.

Personally i think the ideal depth  for a 'raised' veg bed is between 12 and 18 inches, for a decent depth of topsoil. Mine is about 6 which probably isn't really deep enough but seems to give good enough results for the crops i grow. I have found that the best soil is in the layer within the edging boards (where i have added compost over the years) but below that its still pretty much the unimproved natural soil i started with.

[Garden Manager]

Here's what mine look like. Taken last May

[kGarden]

Mine are only about 6". I'm on heavy clay. The previous 3 gardens I have lived at have all been similar soil, but this is the first time that I have used raised beds.  The difference, from day one, was noticeable, (can't think that I did anything significantly different in initial preparation of the beds, no more manure than before and so on) so I think even modest drainage helps.

personally I would only ever consider deep beds if disabled and unable to bend etc.  If nothing else the cost of timber and soil to fill it with would be astronomic (compared to the value of the crop at least!) If I wanted to grow some show Parsnips I reckon I'd just get an oil drum or water butt of similar :)

[SMP1704]

I have wooden raised beds.  I find having defined areas makes it easier to at least feel that I'm in control of weeding etc.  I used scaff planks to create the beds about 8 years ago.  This is the year I will need to replace them as they are rotten.  At a cost of £12 per bed, it's not a bad return but I'll let you know how the replacement process goes - getting new boards around an existing bed.

I don't know how else I would keep all the soil in place unless I had some kind of retaining wall around the bed.

[firstofficerspong]

I have a VERY wet allotment and couldn't manage without raised beds. However, when I first created them I made the mistake of digging out paths and throwing the soil onto the beds. I found that I ended up with islands of damp soil alternated with 6 inch deep channels of water....  Has taken a while to fill the 'paths' back in again!

[Robert_Brenchley]

Kgarden - no, it wouldn't work as I'd then end up wading about half the winter! I'd get more floods in summer as well. I'd still have the same old problem as well; lifting the stuff. Walking along with organic matter in a barrow isn't difficult; it's putting it in the barrow - or equally, digging it out and dumping it inside and adjacent raised bed - which causes the problems.

[kGarden]

if I had standing water in any 6" channel I dug I would put drains in.  They have revolutionised those areas of my garden where I have done that. We are on the "top" of a hill here, but its pretty flat being Suffolk, and heavy clay, so heavy rain takes a while to percolate, and not enough slope to run off, and in mega wet seasons we have standing water on areas of the lawn for weeks at a time (in areas with no French drains)

Not viable for allotments though I suspect.

[Robert_Brenchley]

It probably wouldn't work on mine. I've got an old mill leat at one end, and the natural stream course a hundred yards from the other. The plot slopes away from the leat, which takes most of the water. So it's a natural for waterlogging, and we also get flash floods. I daren't lower the level, even if I could muster enough willing assistants to do it! Fortunately, we get grass cuttings and dead leaves delivered by the ton, so there's never any lack of stuff to fill beds with.