Newbie needs advice on raised beds please

[Ellasmum]

Hello all,

I am a total (I really mean total) beginner to gardening but really want to get my kids involved with growing our own veg.
I have a small area and want to build a raised bed...how deep should it be for Carrots/lettuce/salad onions etc? I was just going to get some large timbers, would that work?
I made my own compost last year and it looks ready for use, what else should I put in the bed to prepare it?
Can I compost rabbits bedding,straw and shavings?
Sory for all the questions, could do with some advice please.
Sam

[vicki lorraine]

Hi Ellasmum
Welcome to the vine.
Im new to GYO too.
Pleased to hear you are keen to compost. You can compost all pet bedding. However ensure it is well rotted before use.
Try to get a good balance of nitrogen and carbon in your compost bin.
I dont use raised beds but there are lots of useful bits of info on this forum. Enter raised beds in the search at the top of the page and have a browse.

Good luck with your gardening. I have got my children involved too. They are so keen and have learnt such a lot.

[rustylady]

Welcome to the vine, Ellasmum - hope you enjoy it. We're a real mix of characters - you can get a lot of useful advice, lots of humour, and it's good to be able to chat to like-minded people.
As for raised beds, I still have to make my first one, though I fully intend to. If you can get timer for free that would be ideal (check out local skips, freecycle sites etc). "Deals" used by builders would be ideal, I would think - they're about 12" wide and about 2" thick, length varies (no doubt someone will come up with the right measurements for me and I still can't do metric). Just be careful if you buy new wood, soft wood such as pine will rot too quickly and anything that has been treated with a preservative can possibly harm the plants you intend to grow. You can buy preformed plastic raised beds but these are quite expensive.
As for compost, you can certainly compost rabbit poo and bedding. Straw will rot down quicker than wood shavings. When it is brown and crumbly it is ready. Compost really just improves the soil structure and helps hold water in light soils (also helps break up heavy clay) but doesn't provide much in the way of nutrients, so you will probably need to add a bit of general purpose fertiliser - you can choose organic or non-organic according to how you want to garden. If you want more info, please re-post. I'm sure everyone will be more than happy to help

[dinky_doo]

you can use roadside barriers as well youknow the ones the water board use to put around the holes they make in the road and then leave them, for six months
plus they are light weight and wont rot at all

[Ellasmum]

Thanks for the replies, great forum.
Looking forward to reading more.
Sam

[shirlthegirl43]

Welcome to the vine!!

You don't need a deep bed these days - you can buy carrots that don't grow long and thin but turn out sort of round - haven't tried them so can't say what they taste like. Salad stuffs don't need deep soil either since you can grow those in a growbag.

Whoopeeee - I am actually giving out advice - now there's a first!

Good luck with your garden and just enjoy what you grow - it will taste sooooo different to what you buy in the shop!

[pigletwillie]

Hi Ellasmum,

We live just down the A6 from you in Scraptoft, one of our allotments is mainly raised beds. You are more than welcome to come on over and have a nose about for ideas and to physically see how things work on the plot.

[supersprout]

Welcome to the vine!!
You don't need a deep bed these days - you can buy carrots that don't grow long and thin but turn out sort of round - haven't tried them so can't say what they taste like.

Paris Market, Parmex - both stump rooted varieties, both gorgeous and full of flavour, they're hardly up before they're ate!

[bloomingbethan]

Paris Market, Parmex - both stump rooted varieties, both gorgeous and full of flavour, they're hardly up before they're ate!

ive just sown these in a big plastic flower bucket so heres hoping

[Alice]

Hello Ellasmum, and welcome to the Vine. If you want to get your children involved you will need some things which will give visible and tastable results very quickly. Let your children sow some Rocket in a pot on the windowsill now. It will be up in a few days. Some peas in a pot on the windowsill will be up tooty fruity - and they can eat the shoots. Put a potato on the windowsill and let them see it sprout, then plant it in a pot for longer term. A little later you can plant some radish - 4 weeks from sowing to eating.
If you want to grow some carrots, try Early Nantes in 8" deep pots, or in 4" deep containers Parmex will give you small round carrots. There's so much - but enjoy gardening with your children, and enjoy the Vine.

[carlseawolf]

raised beds can be built to any depth you like as long as it's no more than 4' wide so you can reach it from both sides without standing in it, and only 3' if against a wall.
there is 2 ways of building them , one way is to build up and the other to dig down .
the building up method is easy no need to dig just put weed membrain down and build a wooden box on top and fill it withsoil,manure and soil to what ever you would like to grow ( this is less effort but higher cost )
dig down method means mark out a bed with string and pegs and dig the bed while putting in your manure or compost this can be lined to keep it tidy with wooden boards.
the positives are ; soil warms faster
- can artifically make the soil a greater depth
- makes a tidy garden
- easy for crop rotation
- no digging

the negatives - costally way of growing veg
- alot of extra watering the higher the beds

i'm putting beds on my plot because iv'e only about 8" of soil so have gone for a mixture of the two and there is about 8" of soil dug out under my beds on my site , so when they are full there will be about 18" of soil in each bed.
look on my web site and see what i built , but look this subject up and decide your best option for your site ,and best of luck.
for composting try this site you will be amazed
www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm

[vicki lorraine]

Wow carlseawolf.
Your plot is coming along nicely, you have worked wonders. Well done.