Veggie patch Vs Raised bed

Newbie alert!!......
Hi all,
Hope this isn't a stupid question!?!?
I am trying to decide whether to use a corner of the garden or a raised bed for growing fruit and veggies. Does it depend on what is grown?

I have a rather bare new garden and I'm trying to plan a little before I just jump in and start planting stuff!

Thanks for reading

 

Hi Ava,

I've inherited a few raised beds, find them a bit of a pain to keep watered enough though.

 

hi ava i grow all my veg in raised beds for quite a few reasons,mainly my soil here is clay and its a nightmare to enrich it,aslo have a bad back so it helps not having to bend so much,i have all the beds on an irragation system so watering is not a problem i do find as well that it is easier to control the weeds .
saying that i do grow my raspberries and figs in the ground but they are very low maintanence,hope this is some help

 

How about constructing a combination, a boardered bed system.

The soil is roughly the same level as the existing ground levels, but the beds are framed for neatness and ease. The best of both worlds.

 

If you line your raised bed with plastic/old compost bags and have plenty of organic matter in the soil, then holding onto the water should not be a problem. Raised beds are good as they warm up quicker in the spring, require less bending to get down to them to plant and weed and as Eddie has shown above they can help to keep things neat and tidy.

However some crops need to put their roots down deeper than others, root crops such as carrots and Parsnips would need a deeper bed than Eddies above.

You need to think long term what is best for your growing conditions and what you would like to grow and how.

We have all raised beds at home in our garden as my Anne has decreased mobility so this arrangement suits our needs. At our allotment plots I plant directly into the ground and have no plans to make raised beds as yet.

Steve...

 

Thanks for replying - that's really helpful. I like the neatness of the boardered bed system, that's something I'm really tempted by. The ones in your picture Eddie are also very accessible aren't they - I think I should leave space around the patch (it will be in the corner of the garden) to allow room for me to walk round it. Hmmm....something else to think about.

I did wonder if things like Parsnips would need to go deeper than a raised bed - I love Parsnips and they are definitely on my 'to grow' list.

 

Hi steve,

The beds are fine for both carrots and parsnips. All that I have done is simply put the boarding around at the existing ground level.

This was the average carrot length for last year.

 

Surely raised beds are just the normal soil raised up by adding some kind of boarding around the edge.
You dont actually stop the roots penetrating into the soil, below the raised up level,do you???
Nice carrot Eddie

 

I agree Pete, I've loosened and conditioned the soil beneath my new raised beds, I'm growing carrots and parsnips in them this year, they measure (approx) 9' x 3' with a depth (above soil level) of about 8", experimenting to see if raised beds make a difference, fair results last year in "open" ground!

 

I've been watering the ones I put sand/soil mix in (because I've got heavy clay soil) since March.

 

Hi Pete, thanks for replying - I didn't realise that - I thought the raised beds were like a large box, so anything that grew deep would hit the bottom, newbie error I guess

 

I think if its got a bottom in it, it becomes container growing.

 

The advantage (I think) is that the veg you grow has MORE root-depth than a normal bed would have. If you have very sandy soil then the disadvantage of raised beds will be that they drain too quickly.

If you have heavy clay then there is huge benefit. The beds drain better, and you won't have to dig them (provided you never walk on them; don't make them more than 4' wide so you can reach the middle from either side).

However, you should dig them )the original soil, "under" the raised part) the first season, and you should ideally dig it to two spade depth so called "double digging" because it is twice the depth of a spade, but it uses a method whereby the soil from the top spade's depth is not mixed with the poorer quality "sub soil" from the second spade's depth.

I dug out the "paths" around my beds, and put the soil on the beds to raise them, and I added some manure / compost / etc. but not excessively. That raised them about 6" above the paths, and that was enough to create improved drainage etc. For the first 5 years I didn't have any boards around them - so called "lazy raised beds" Depends how smart you need them to look, how sure you are that you want beds there indefinitely, and so on.

 

Assuming of course that the raised bed is built onto soil and not onto a concrete or some other solid surface. This raised bed of mine is such and is built on top of an old pathway base of concrete, it's been cracked for drainage but not removed so the bed was built deep enough for Carrots and Parsnips.



Steve...