Soil Types for 4 Course Rotation (Advice Please)

[OllieMartin]

I am just building 4 raised beds in my garedn to do a 4-course rotation in.

Beds:
1. Potatoes
2. Legumes
3. Brassicas
4. Root Veg

I have some manure coming for the potato bed, but I wondered if anyone had any advice on preparing the beds for their course of veg.
E.g. What layers to do? Whether to dig the soil over first?
What compost/soil to use? What should I mix it with? (Fertiliser, manure, lime, seaweed etc)?


^Marked out beds

Any advice is greatly appreciated as usual.

Thanks

[FionaH]

If you are doing lasagne layers and are thinking of using straw may I make one suggestion? Put the straw way way down the bottom! I have used straw in one of my beds and it grew through compost and topsoil!

[TEB]

Have you taken a few PH reading's of your soil

[OllieMartin]

Have you taken a few PH reading's of your soil

No, I didn't know how important that was. Will that matter if I'm filling the beds? I was thinking that if I know what soil I'm putting in them, then the original soil underneath would not be so important.

Please correct me if this is an incorrect assumption.

[TEB]

Sorry I forgot you havent done the beds yet, I wouldn't lime until the beds have been made and filled and after a PH test, because its easier to bring an acid soil back to PH Neutral or alkaline than going the over way, also it isnt recommended to mix lime and compost at the same time.

[OllieMartin]

To help fill the beds and avoid buying in large amounts of compost, I was thinking of putting some of the turf back into some of the beds upside down.

Are their any of the four beds that particularly would/wouldn't benefit from this?

I'm also starting to double dig, but I imagine that the brassica patch won't appreciate this as my cabbages will want firm soil. True/false?

[TEB]

Good idea with laying the turf back, green side down, I shouldn't imagine it will prove a problem to any of the veg you intend to grow.

How tall are you beds going to be because it may just need the existing soil to be turned over rather than double dug.

If you really firm in the brassicas then they should be okay

[OllieMartin]

They're only 4" old decking boards I'm using. To be honest I wouldn't really call them "raised" beds, they're more boarders to create divides between the beds and hold some soil/compost/manure.

Well I'm half way through double digging one bed (so single dug!). My guess is that the potatoes will benefit from this most as they grown deepest.

Again, this is a huge learning curve for me, so any advice will be greatly appreciate (and followed!)

[TEB]

Unless your soil is firmaly compacted as in a hardpan and if it were me then I would just single dig a spit deep which will be enough for your spuds, the only problem I could forsee and that would be with carrots and parsnips but you should have about 10" of soil all in all, so unless you are after 10"+ carrots or parsnip your good to go