Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: steveg1966 on February 23, 2014, 09:03:10
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I have been looking at some of the other plots on our allotment site and wonder weather it is worth having raised beds like I have now because a lot of growing space seems to be lost and the general consensus on the site seems to be the wood edging will harbour unwanted such as slugs etc anybody’s thought would be great.
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Fixed slightly raised planting beds with no wooden edging gives most of the benefits with none of the cost. Wood edging is more for the gardener than the plants, creating a sense of order. The exception of course is if you need seriously raised beds because of drainage problems. Fixed beds definitely suit low tillage systems, and perennial crops, whereas growing spuds is simpler without fixed beds in my opinion.
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I agree with Ian. But it rather depends on your soil. They can be a help to reduce bending, but I had one and found I kept tripping over it. I try and build up my beds so they become raised naturally. I simply use straw for paths, but that harbours even more bugs than the wood. I think they make it more difficult to hoe round the plants so weeding takes longer.
I do like them for my runner beans to increase the soil depth.
They do look very nice and tidy. Perhaps if you plant right up to the edge the plants will drip over and reduce the waste of space.
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Depends on local conditions, and the state of your health. If you have problems bending, or the plot suffers from waterlogging, say, it's definitely worthwhile. It's an awful lot of work to do to be fashionable though!
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I'm with Ian when he says;
Fixed slightly raised planting beds with no wooden edging gives most of the benefits with none of the cost.
This is how I have prepared the new plot I have just taken over;
http://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Blogspot/Dec%2013%20Blog/Dec%2013%20blog.htm
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Hi guys,
I might be abit off key here, but to me a raised bed is high enough for someone to sit on the edge or put a small plank in between two beds of same height. Say, to cope with a back injury or an elderly person who cannot bend.
I think, what your describing is to me, a bordered bed, yes, it gives a bit more soil depth but is it worth it?
As I say, I might be off key and no offence meant.
Digmore. :wave:
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I think Digmore has hit the nail on the head. Is it a bed, or a raised bed. A lot of people use the term "raised" automatically before saying "bed". For drainage, health reasons, or sometimes aesthetics, they can be useful, otherwise I wouldn't use them.
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Couldn't do without ours :happy7:
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My plot's on a slope of heavy clay and has real drainage problems. My beds are terracing the slope, with 6inch wood borders, and raised another few inches by digging out the paths and filling with woodchip. This year those beds aren't sitting in puddles of water and my broccoli and kale aren't drowning in stagnant beds.
And they look really pretty. ;)
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There are lots of different types of raised beds, and as long as the bed is higher than the path, it seems to fit the description. A main advantage of raised beds in general is that they warm up earlier than flat ground in spring. This is partly because of the better drainage, but also by being higher, they catches more of the low sun. For this reason, I build my beds about a foot high, tapering down to path level at the sides, and no edging (second photo in this post http://oca-testbed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/extending-oca-growing-season-through.html (http://oca-testbed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/extending-oca-growing-season-through.html)). This also allows cold air to drain off, and so gives a small amount of frost protection.
Edging has some benefits (retaining mulches, keeping untrained visitors off the beds,) but seems mostly for tidiness.
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I have 12 raised beds, the plastic ones and all 8 x 4 feet. They enable me to have much better soil for growing, rather than tacky clay. They allow me to fix specific sized hoops that I can very easily net over. Weeding is not difficult because I have a definite area and they hoe or lift easily. They allow me to easily plan my rotations on a chart. I would not be without them and tbh would not have any other than plastic as they do not dry the edges or harbour nasties. 1/3 of the plot is not raised beds and the soil is much more difficult to work, so that area is given over to fruit
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I have what i would call slightly raised beds, as in they are only raised by 6" above the surrounding ground. On my soil (chalky-clay loam over shallow chalk) i find they work better than open soil growing. I can concentrate cultivation on set areas and access is generally all weather as i have gravel paths in between.
Beds were constructed of wood (gravel boards), however as these are now rotting badly i have decided to replace them gradually with recycled plastic board kits (brand name Link a Board - google it). I rebuilt the first one with this system just yesterday.
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I also employ beds that are about 6 inches above the surrounding paths with no wooden or plastic edging.
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Mine are slightly-raised too. I excavated the paths and put the spoil on the beds to raise them. They had no wooden edges (what I understand to be called "Lazy raised beds"), but the soil slid off the beds and needed sorting out every year or two, and planting the "shoulders" didn't work well, so I felt I was losing some planting width, and when time & money allowed I put some wooden boards along the edges.
(https://kgarden.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/img_1801_lazyraisedbeds.jpg)
Original path-lowering / bed-raising
(https://kgarden.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/img_1756_raisedbedsafter.jpg)
Wooden edging added later
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kGarden. That looks impressive. What are the ends made of? They look a bit like tombstones!
Lazy bed raised beds are probably fine for allotments and would probably suit me due to the zero financial cost and simple construction! However my veg beds are in a garden so they need to look good as well as being functional and easy to keep tidy.
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I need raised beds badly due to waterlogging, but it's a right labour building them. I've managed ten over a couple of years, and I've just done my back in for the second time. They're about four metres long (the length of a long scaffolding plank), three feet six wide, and a foot high. It takes about twenty barrowloads to fill one.
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What are the ends made of? They look a bit like tombstones!
They do a bit don't they?! A mate gave me a load of wood he didn't want, lots of boards which I used for the edges and some chunky slabs, so I decided to make some "Book Ends" with them. My plan is to pin a clear plastic wallet to the ends with a sheet inside listing what is in each bed - then weekend house guests who offer to pick something from the veg patch for lunch might actually come back with the right thing!!
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t takes about twenty barrowloads to fill one.
Would digging the paths out, onto the beds, be an option for you perhaps?
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My beds were partly made by digging out level paths between them to fill the beds once each was built. My veg plot is the flattest part of my otherwise sloping garden, even so there is still a fall from one end to the other, cutting and filling when making the beds was the best way to overcome the slope and create level beds and paths.
When i made the beds i did though make the mistake of filling the beds right up with soil, leaving little room for compost. I have found myself from time to time removing soil from the beds to make more space in them. Don't like doing it though as it tends to remove the best soil! (hard work too). Digging the beds over less or not at all seems to have helped, although i am now considering trying to remove some of the soil underneath the beds in order to lower the soil level in the beds and preserve the good soil on top.
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Digmore has asked the right question.
The other question is: raised beds or deep beds?
My beds (4 ft wide by about 15 ft long) are 'deep' because I never trample them.
They are 'raised' (about 6 to 8 inches) because a) I rake soil from the paths and scatter it on the bed, so the paths get deeper and the beds get higher, and b) every 5 years in the rotation the bed becomes a compost heap.
Surrounding the beds with wooden boards seems, to me, like a waste of time and money (no offence meant to those who do :glasses9:. kGarden, your beds look very smart.)
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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 :glasses9:. 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 ...
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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.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/richardfiler/Latest%20Garden%20Pictures/th_DSCF0628.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/richardfiler/media/Latest%20Garden%20Pictures/DSCF0628.jpg.html)
Here's what mine look like. Taken last May
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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 :)
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.