The paths around my raised beds

I've been told that I should have started the digging and prep work earlier in the year but i haven't so its tough.

Anyhow, I will finish the buiiding of my 5'x10' raised beds after work tonight and from reading previous threads it seems i should fill them with manure, soil improver, loam, top soil etc. That about right?

Then I'm left with the surrounding paths/walkways. Please dont tell me to leave it turf because I've already dug it up. In total I have approx 120 sq ft or 12 sq m of path (in a digital clock number 8 shape) around my beds. My 1st idea was to lay crushed slate chips but I wonder if you have any cheaper, more functional, more attractive ways?

 

Regarding timing, I have to agree that you have to do what you can, when you can. There's still plenty of time to get lots of things going anyway. On clay soils, admittedly digging then leaving it over winter makes things easier, but i've done it spring out of necessity and got great crops - digging was very hard work though! This was on my allotment and I left the paths as bare earth, which ended up being a nightmare as I hadn't got a mower and couldn't keep up with hoeing.

Second time around in my new garden, I used weed barrier then wood chips on my paths - I think this would be cheaper than slate chips but not sure (Focus had a special offer 4 for 3 or something, still on last time I was there). Once compacted they are easy to push a barrow over, should you want to, but they will need topping up / replacing over the years. I like the aesthetic myself and so far am very pleased with this method.

Inside the beds I found that single digging made the soil "fluff up" quite a lot and once I'd added manure or compost (according to crops to be grown) in most of my beds (heights of the sides vary as I used up all the wood that was lying around) I didn't need much more (just a bit of top soil that was overflowing other areas of the garden e.g. after excavating the pond!).

Hope that helps!

 

I know exactly what you mean by 'fluffed up' soil. There seems to be an awful lot of the stuff now.

Think the wood chips idea would work.

I've read manure isn't too great for certain crops, therefore is compost a safe one stop shop as an alternative or does it too have its drawbacks?

 

Yes, it's quite amazing how much it grows isn't it? :D

Regarding compost / manure - as a general rule I go by groups for crop rotation. "Beans and peas" and "potatoes" (in my case, courgettes and sweet corn as I don't really eat potatoes so don't bother growing them) get manure - "roots beets and onions" and "brassicas" (in my case this is mostly salads, plus spinach) get compost. This worked very well on the allotment and is what i'll do here too - but purists may say there's more to it than that so I wouldn't take it as gospel. Maybe worth starting a new topic specifically for this one?

 

Hello, what are you planting in your raised beds? Root veggies don't like manure and with beans, lettuce, peas and onions you can get away with just using a balanced fertiliser. However F-in-L always manures the potato beds even though my veggie book calls them roots. This is probably not a lot of help but I dare say there will be others far more knowledgeable, this is only my 2nd year of veggie growing

 

I'll let oyu know at the end of this year as we have just made raised beds and i added what I had to hand from two wormeries and compost that was ready and when the compost ran out I used composted farmyard manure in bags so can test all the theories. I remeber exactly what I did where as its all conveniently boxed in now.

I was grateful for the tip about paths thank you. We also have the problem that the ground is sloping very steeply so the boxes are terraced two ways so soem paths will be probably be slanting widthways as well as lengthwise the beds are small though 5ft.sqaure and hopefully manageable without wheelbarrow access. I cant believe how happy I feel about having it all so under control.

 

You might be a bit late now, but I got my barkchips free from local authority after the christmas tree and park tree felling. They have so much bark they do not know what to do with it.

Might be worth contacting them to see if they have any left.

 

Damn, wish I'd known that badsal!
Like your signature btw.

 

I used bark chippings on top of weed prevention fabric.