veggie raised beds...how to close them down for a year

Hi Everyone

I'm new here, so apologies if isn't quite the right place to post. Please advise if there is a better forum to use...or if I should double post somewhere else???

I've been running a veggie garden in 7 raised beds (all 2m x 1 m) for about 8 years now. I grow a variety of stuff - multiple beans, cabbage, carrot, garlic, leeks etc, some weird and wonderfuls, such as tomatillos, chickpeas, cape gooseberry. I also have a green house for peppers okra aubergines, and grow tomatoes, squash etc outdoors in pots. This has been a pretty grim year in the garden, weather wise its been wet and cloudy, so yields have been low and the soil in the beds seems to be exhausted and sad and in some , at a very low level.

I am now in a difficult place healthwise and am having to close down at least 5 of the raised beds, the greenhouse and the pots once I clear them this autumn. I won't be able to manage them next year at all.

I'd really appreciate some guidance as to how to do this. Ideally, I would like to use this gap as a time to improve the soil quality. However I won't be able to anything much physically for the whole of 2025, including basic weeding or adding soil, so I appreciate this is probably a bit of wishful thinking! The alternative is to minimise the the inevitable weedfest and soil deterioration over the coming months. Any ideas how? Cardboard or old carpet as a covering for the beds comes to mind. Is there something better? Any idea what I should be prepared to see come 2026 when hopefully I can be back in the garden again? Its really tough saying 'goodbye' to my plots anyway, but to be so clueless about how to do it is adding insult to injury!

Any and all suggestions would be incredibly welcome.
I should mention I'm in the SE of the UK (Kent) , so warm, usually dry weather, hardly any frost though some cold onshore breezes, and the raised bed and greenhouse area is SE facing and mainly in full sun.

Thanks in advance for your help
Flea

 

Welcome to the forum! Is there some sort of cover crop that will enhance the soil until you can get back to working it?

I'm sure somebody here who lives in your climate will pop in and offer more specific advice

 

Hello and welcome.

You can certainly cover the beds with cardboard and then your own garden compost or some manure and that will get broken down over the winter and improve the soil but then you'll get weeds. Old carpet is a problem because if it's made form natural fibres it is very heavy to manoeuvre and it it isn't it will be bad for your soil and its organisms.

You could consider clearing the beds and then planting garlic, onion sets and shallots and give them a mulch of somthing like Strulch or straw or grass cuttings or wool from fleeces - farmers can't get a decent price at the mo so you may find some cheap.

Another crop you can over-winter is the brassicas - cabbages, sprouts, kale, broccoli - and Swiss chard.

You could also just sow a green manure such as phacelia or single flowered hardy annuals which will provide flowers and nectar for insects and just leave them there till you're ready to garden again.

 

Hi @fleabag we had a similar problem in our community garden, not because of ill health but because we had too many raised beds and not enough volunteers to maintain them. We decided to get some decent landscape fabric and cover some of the beds and it's been quite effective at keeping the beds weed free. We plan to lift the fabric and top with manure then re cover and leave them until next year.

 

If you want to take care of the soil, best to grow something in it.
I'd go for a green manure crop of some kind - I can't recommend one as I tend to keep bed covered with crop plants.

I have in the past mused that if I wasn't using a bed for a season I'd fill it with nasturtiums - keep the ground covered, easy growing, produce lots of green manure and easy to pull up if I wanted to use the bed again.
Ideally get someone to cover the beds with manure in the autumn first.
Covering the bed with plastic or carpet would, I would have thought, damage the structure and health of the soil micro-organisms.

 

Surely if you use a green manure you are going to have to dig it in next spring, and it sounds like that wont be possible.
I would have thought if you want to keep the beds weed free for 12 to 18 months the only option is to cover them.

 

I agree with Pete. Buy some good quality mulching material and cover the beds with it. Weigh it down or use pegs/stones so it doesn't blow away in gales. If you don't like the look of that, you could use bark mulch over the top but would be more expense of course.

 

It's worth being clear that farmers don't cover the soil with inorganic material on a fallow year.
I seem to remember clover being a traditional plant growing on a fallow year...

 

Improving the soiland then sowing clover or phacelia will help soil and wildlife and look a lot better than landscape fabric.

In my experience, that stuff doesn't suppress determined weeds like thistles and bindweed and it collects debris in which weed seeds sow themslevs.

If the OP really has to take a year off being able to tend their beds then having something pretty and useful is surely the better plan.

 

If the cover crop is allowed to seed the weed problem in subsequent years will be ginormous in my opinion.

It's all about being able to dig it in before it sets seed.
Which doesn't seem to be possible here.

 

I think the thing with cover crops is they are mostly used as a fast growing and maturing plant which is suppose to be dug in in a few months.
Not sure how lupins would behave.

 

The cover crop to use would be brown mustard*, for it will die with a frost. it may be too late to sow this year, July/August would be ideal.
Personally prefer @Stephen Southwest suggestion as above as being best compromise.