Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: GrannieAnnie on November 28, 2009, 02:04:33
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The town library has a no-dig book with a picture of raised beds made with no wood.
I'd never seen this method. They used wire fencing to make the walls fastening it to wood stakes in the corners, the only place wood was used. Next they lined it completely with cardboard, both floor and up all four sides to hold the dirt, leaves and compost in. Has anyone ever tried this method?
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I have put cardboard on the base of my beds after reading about it on here.
The only problem I can see with putting it up the sides is it will rot and no longer contain the soil. :)
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they are either for a single season use, or they are hoping that the compost will bind itself together
was this for a very high-rainfall area?if so, they nay have been after good drainage?
you can have no-dig without frames,
http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/forum
but I never seen ones made from wire.
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Why not line the sides of the raised beds with plastic sheeting of some kind to suit, it will have a longer life than cardboard and will also protect the wiremesh from rotting, :)
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I made a compost bin with four pallets and lined it with thick cardboard round the sides to hold the waste materials in. . I am just emptying it and the cardboard is still there. I grew some squash on top which did very well. Sort of a high rise bed.
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I don't put anything round mine.
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That's a nice example Froglegs. I've just got the one raised bed for the asparagus and it's just like that.
IMHO raised beds in wooden frames have been popularised by TV gardeners to the extent that many new gardeners assume it's the only way to grow.
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Why make work for your self i can think of better things to be getting on with other than making sides for raised bed,it cost nothing this way more to spend on seeds,but most important for me my 30 beds are not permanent so if i wont to change the layout all i have to do is move the paths,plus i can not see that it makes any difference whether you have them or not.
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I have found the traditional raised beds with wooden surrounds a great asset.
I have used all sorts of surrounds......old greenhouse base,breeze blocks,bricks...........you name it.Wood is by far the best.
Geoff Hamilton to my knowledge started it all off and to my mind if it was OK with Geoff it was OK with me.
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I should have known this thread would start the old war about dig vrs no dig beds ::)
I'm interested in them because we get driving hard rains that could take the paint off a car and will wash away good topsoil, mulch, you name it. The wood frame prevents that. I know the cardboard walls would only last a season but think it worth a try?
So, back to the wire frame idea...
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There's no reason at all why you can't do no dig without frames. They're really different things, and I'm not sure why they've become so linked. No dig is the same whether you combine it with raised beds or not. Raised beds are a tool you use if you have waterlogging, and need to improve drainage. I'm not convinced they have any real use apart from that.
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robert but have try them if so please out line how you did the comparisons
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I don't see a problem with that idea other than you would have to bend the wire over carefully otherwise you might get caught up in it / scratch yourself. Plus it would mean less places for slugs to hide. Interesting idea
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I don't see a problem with that idea other than you would have to bend the wire over carefully otherwise you might get caught up in it / scratch yourself. Plus it would mean less places for slugs to hide. Interesting idea
The picture actually showed the type wire fencing that comes in flat pieces to shove in the ground that fit together, some folks use it as decorative border fencing. I don't think it is tight enough to even keep a grown rabbit out. We have some leftover chicken wire fencing I'd thought to use instead.
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I see what you mean now :D
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i have raised beds no wood no wire i just slope the sides of my soil to stop it falling on to my paths they are about 18 inches high
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Raised beds are a tool you use if you have waterlogging, and need to improve drainage. I'm not convinced they have any real use apart from that.
Betula might be right about Geoff Hamilton starting the trend - was it his artisan's garden? If it was then the raised beds were essentially esthetic, which is perfectly valid, but I wonder that this has been conflated with the drainage, deep mulch, and no-dig ideas and that the new generation of allotmenteers are simply emulating what they've seen without appreciating the principles, and so making life harder for themselves than it needs to be.
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Raised beds make life easier for me and I have had better crops since using them.
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Every allotment is different and while I am happy to look at the ideas that come along I find the golden rule is do what works for you.
We have such a problem with water on our allotmen that containing the bed has been the only answer,believe me I have tried the easier ways.
I am not sure if what you say is correct about Geoff's original use of raised beds but I will check it out later.If I can be bothered.
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bettula I do not believe wood framed bed were introduce by Hamilton. Since I have seen references to them , that are much older.
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I do not think Geoff Hamilton invented raised beds. I would not be surprised if it dated back to Roman times and before - I believe they built walls round terracing etc. In Egypt they build little earth walls round growing areas to keep the water and soil in. One has the feeling that little has changed since the times of the Pharoahs.
What is being suggested is that he started a trend, a fashion, an enthusiasm for them. He certainly publicised organic gardening techniques in the UK and many people turned towards that direction under his influence. He certainly started a lot of people asking questions about the need for chemicals. Me included.
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Raised beds have been used for thousands of years to overcome problems cultivating inhospitable landscapes, the first recorded use of raised beds I know of is in the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis. Using raised beds when there is no need to do so was made popular in the 1970's & is a trend which still continues today.
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Walking in Uganda, I noticed raised beds everywhere, fieldfuls of them, miles of them. I believe that they are good for tropical downpours, for instance, as rain drains away down the channels instead of swamping the plots of corn and potatoes etc.
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Hanging Gardens of Semiramis
I believe these are also known as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and I think they were a bit before GHs time.
I get rather confused by people who use raised beds to improve drainage on very well drained soil. I use them more for beans etc to increase root depth and moisture on shallow dry soils. So half the people with them on our site have in my opinion got the wrong crops in them. A lot of gardening programmes talk about improving drainage, but forget to mention that your drainage might not need improving.
I read a few years ago that if you dig a hole and fill it with water if the water is still there after 48 hours you have a drainage problem. (I still have not managed to fill the hole). I have just got a meter so I will have to stop now. ;D ;D
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we dig a hole, wait 20 mins and it's full and doesn't drain until summer ;D
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I do not think Geoff Hamilton invented raised beds. I would not be surprised if it dated back to Roman times and before - I believe they built walls round terracing etc. In Egypt they build little earth walls round growing areas to keep the water and soil in. One has the feeling that little has changed since the times of the Pharoahs.
What is being suggested is that he started a trend, a fashion, an enthusiasm for them. He certainly publicised organic gardening techniques in the UK and many people turned towards that direction under his influence. He certainly started a lot of people asking questions about the need for chemicals. Me included.
I think you have got it right Digeroo............I know he did start a big trend for them.
What does it matter if people want to use raised beds anyway?
Hardly a crime is it???
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They were around before, but he may well have popularised them by putting them on the Holy Gogglebox..
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drainage in not only advantage to wood framed raised beds.
but seems that is all most people think is there only benefit.
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They are certainly better for the back, less bending.
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I picked up a book in a second hand bookshop in Brecon a couple of months back. It was printed in 1891 and there displayed are raised beds. The writer said that raised bed were at least 5 thousand year old idea. Apparently the Egyptians used them using the paths between the beds for irrigation
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Walking in Uganda, I noticed raised beds everywhere, fieldfuls of them, miles of them. I believe that they are good for tropical downpours, for instance, as rain drains away down the channels instead of swamping the plots of corn and potatoes etc.
So there's your answer GrannyAnnie! What with your rain that strips paint anorl. Get building ;) ;D
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Powerspade, were the beds contained by anything, or just heaped up?
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If you go to Mali, you'll find the opposite; sunken beds. It's an arid area, and by lowering the level of the beds, they maintain that bit extra moisture in the soil. I hadn't thought about back problems; that would be another good reason for building raised beds.
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Raised beds heat up earlier in the spring as well, it's not all about drainage. I've also found that whilst the beds themselves drain, they drain into the (soil/mud) paths, which is a bit of pain. I guess that's back to the paths question on other threads...
On the original idea, it does sound good, but wouldn't you have to keep updating the cardboard as it rotted? Would chicken wire have the strength to hold it (I guess there's different grades of chicken wire).
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Raised beds heat up earlier in the spring as well, it's not all about drainage. I've also found that whilst the beds themselves drain, they drain into the (soil/mud) paths, which is a bit of pain. I guess that's back to the paths question on other threads...
On the original idea, it does sound good, but wouldn't you have to keep updating the cardboard as it rotted? Would chicken wire have the strength to hold it (I guess there's different grades of chicken wire).
Yes, the cardboard I'm guessing would last a season but, it seems to me if someone was just starting a nightmare of an allotment and wanted to get usable ground in a hurry plus cover over and smother weeds it might be much faster and less expensive than doing wood frames. Or if one wanted a quick compost area for leaves it might do very well. I think the chicken wire would hold if the corner stakes were strong and well-pounded in.
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Just to go back to the subject of raised beds without frames, such as the ridges in Froglegs' pics, doesn't Joy Larkcom suggest that raising up the level of the soil using ridges - I believe as opposed to using a frame - is equivalent to moving a certain distance further south? Obviously, we are talking northern hemisphere, here. This is on my mind at the moment as I am about to build up a border using compost etc and wondering whether to "ridge it" or not.
Further on the subject of "ridges vs raised beds", there is a community garden in West Leeds which uses "wave ridges" - it's a permaculture thing, in this particular case.
Best regards,
Sue
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I'd read the Joy Larkcom ridges thing as well. And coudn't quite figure out the benefits as opposed to the effort needed!
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Perhaps it comes down to personal preference. I have some beds with wooden sides and many more without, both grow good crops but are different to work.
Sided beds are more raised and dry out more in summer, also they can harbour slugs on the inside of the boards. Any plastic lining makes the slug problem worse. Last week my sided beds looked as though they were floating in water but their leeks stayed healthy, especially on the un-dug bed.
I find that beds with no sides are less neat to behold because badgers rifle through the compost and manure and flick it onto pathways, then blackbirds do the same in spring and summer. However this is good for the pathways (mine are just soil, no mulch or gravel or weeds) and benefits the vegetables which root into pathways from both sides. Also it helps drainage by encouraging compost-fed worms into pathways. I found that during the recent horrendously wet weather, it was possible to push heavy wheelbarrows of compost on any path I needed to, on clay soil, and the only really wet paths were around the beds with wooden sides.
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If you're doinjg it to get onto a rather scabrous site quickly and still get some production while you deal with the weeds by other means then can I suggest Builders bags....the things that sand and gravel is delivered in is non-returnable unless you take them back to the shop (and there's no incentive to do so as there's no deposit) .... I put out a request on freecycle and got plenty.... they've allowed me to get a whole load of things done in temporary structures that can be used as compost bins, or big grow bags but are usefully portable when empty, double up as a load-liner for my camper-van/minibus conversion so I can pick up all the topsoil and manure I need in them too....
OK they aren't pretty but it's an allotment, not Heligan.....
chrisc