Allotments 4 All

Hi there, great site you have here. Just what I've been looking for. :)
OH & I have recently acquired a lottie which needs a fair bit of work before we can really get started on it.
Ideally we would like raised beds, only a foot or so, but we really wouldn't know where to get them from. Any ideas?
Money is a serious issue, isn't it always, so really really cheap planks would be great.

Hi Bun and welcome!!
Mr p and I have been busy making raised beds on our newly(ish) acquired plot.  Raised beds of about a foot or so seem a little high??  We have used old roof joists that we found in a skip - these are about 12ft long and about 8in wide so they do not create  raised beds as such but rather  defined ones.  One each side and one cut in half for each end makes a good sized bed.
It really is worth your while to become a 'skip rat' as it's amazing what other people throw away that can be used on an allotment. I always make a point of asking before taking anything and people generally seem amazed that we can make good use of their junk!
We have dug the beds over and thrown in some manure which is busy being worked through the soil as we speak!
I'm sure there'll be others along soon with lots of good advice  -have fun and my top tip is to TAKE IT SLOWLY and ENJOY
Plottie  :)

Bun, there are lots of posts around about this. I think you can pick up used scaffolding planks quite cheaply, or even free. My Other Half got a whole load of used wood from our local tip/recycling centre on the weekend too, although you have to watch the nails.

Another idea is to do what I'm doing at my lottie - making raised beds with no wood. You just pile the soil up high. I have a bit of a trench on all sides, and have sloping sides to the bed, and I piled the soil in to the middle as I dug. The soil has only ended up around 6 inches above ground level, but with some organic matter, it could easily end up taller.

Welcome to the site, and good luck with your lottie  :)

We are lucky in having a friendly local reclaimer. Every now and then we get a lorry load of timber from 4 x4 up to sleeper size and some as long as 3mt. It's all the wood that has nails in and won't be recycled because you can't use machinery to cut it. It gets rejcted by their usual outlets so they're pretty glad to get it off their hands.
We then store it for anyone to use.

Bun,

Welcome.

Firstly why do you need raised beds?

They are good if the soil is heavy or wet but otherwise just a bed is as good - and better if your soil is light, raised beds under those conditions dry out too quickly.

The beds will raise naturally as you work in organic material but this can be coped with by having a sight domed bed.

If you do definitely need to raise the beds then scrap wood is perfectly adequate, you may need to replace it every few years, but if it's free who cares? We get ours from a local light industrial estate where the large packing cases provide loads of material - they even deliver (it saves them disposal costs) any not used up after a week or so is burned to provide wood ash. Skips are another good source.

Phil

Thanks for the welcome.
I'm in Essex so it's quite heavy clay around here. Also, the lottie seems wetter than my garden which is bad enough.
I think I have found a supplier who will deliver for free & can do a 6"x 1" x 20' x 5' bed for £15.  That's without posts & nails, but I work for B&Q & I'm sure I could get some wonky post wood (they do a good line in wonky wood  ;) ) quite cheaply.
I have spent the morning on the phone & that's the cheapest I could find. Even old scaffold boards are £5-£6 each around here!
This means that I could do 5 beds for less than £100. It's still enough that we will have to save & scrape for a month or two, but it's cheaper than I thought it would be.
Thanks for your help.

ooo Bun, where in Essex are you?  Being an adopted Essex girlie myself and allotmenteering just outside Chelsmford I know how heavy the ground can be, but we are so lucky, for some reason our allotment is amazingly free draining, BECAUSE IT IS FULL OF STONES!  ;D ;D ;D

Hi Emma Jane.

I'm from Harlow.  :)

Hi Wabbit  ;D
Fancy seeing you here, i bumped into Eileen to  :)
good luck with it hun, it really is a shame your not closer as John works for a builders merchants and gets wood really cheap, we did our beds with treated gravel boards and the posts where from broken up pallets.
Have fun with it and  im sure you will get some 'help' from the little one ;)

Hay Flower.  ;D

Once Will gets over his fear of the lottie, he'll be just fine. The 2nd time we went there he was stung in the neck by a wasp & remembers it well.  :'(
We've hardly been over there all winter, but will probably go over next week to see if the previous renters have cleared all their rubbish & broken glass away yet.  >:(
Doubt it.  :-\

I’ve just Googled Raised Beds and there seems to be more advantages than disadvantages, that has pleased me as I have picked that way to go having spoke to peeps about it on message boards. I am hoping to feel less threatened by the chore doing one bed at a time. ???
Here are a few links I found…
http://www.raised-garden-beds.com/Advantages-2.htm
http://www.thegardenhelper.com/raised~bed.html
http://ag.udel.edu/extension/information/hyg/hyg-36.htm

aw bless him Bun  :-\ hope he gets over it and had fun growing his own veggies :)
Roy whe have all raised beds and find then so much easier and i get just as much out of the plot :)

We have raised beds at the lotty ... two reasons only ... no dig and nice and easy to manage.  They also look much more tidy. Imho :D

Hay Roy.  :)

I'm really taking to raised beds!

Your lettuces look very pretty Tim  :)  What's the dimensions of your raised beds if you don't mind me asking?

Wardy

Hiya Bun

I scrounge wooden pallets off the smaller companies on my local industrial estate.   They're usually grateful for me to take them 'cos it saves them cost of disposal.   My plumber is so grateful he's even got his staff delivering unwanted pallets direct to my house, normally 5 or 6 at a time.

I have to split the pallets to get the usable wood out but I don't mind.   The exercise is cheaper than £30/month gym fees & I always reward myself with chocolate afterwards.

I'm splitting my plot into beds to make it easier to manage.   My beds will be 12 foot long & 4 foot wide.   So far I've obtained enough wood to make my first eight beds for this year plus almost enought to construct a 7 x 5 foot shed with sloping roof.   All other wood will then be used to construct future beds.   Plus there's always other lottie holders at my site who are always in need of wood for various stuff so I can always get rid of excess pallets.

I was in your shoes last year so I know how you feel.   Good luck & remember to take it slow & steady, you'll make faster progress that way.

CC

A bit under 4'x4', Wardy - it's the way the 'protimed' planks divide best.

I've got two small plastic raised beds of Link-a-bord (one given as a sample) and these are about 3' square.  I have put seeds of mixed salad leaves in one and radish and corn salad in the other.  No sign of any corn salad but the rest have romped away. 

The lettuces are now growing beautifully and we've been eating them on our sarnis on the lotty.  This photo is just as the seeds began to germinate.  Will take another "after" photo next time I go up the plot

These plastic boxes can go on to of each other and they just click together

Wardy  (these aren't the expensive ones as seen in the Organic Catalogue)  These are about £4.50

Those look good value - where do you get them?