Raised beds

[looneylisa]

Hi

My name is Lisa and I'm completely new to growing my own fruit and veg so thought I would start with a few raised beds but was wondering if anyone could give me any ideas about sizes and designs etc.

Thankyou

[Snadger]

Hi

My name is Lisa and I'm completely new to growing my own fruit and veg so thought I would start with a few raised beds but was wondering if anyone could give me any ideas about sizes and designs etc.

Thankyou

No more than 4'0" wide so that you can reach half way from each side! Length is up to you but try not to make them so long that it takes ages to walk round them say 12'0" max!

Welcome to the vine btw Lisa!

[Alice]

Hello Looneylisa and welcome to the Vine. There's a lot about raised beds if you type that in the search box. The main advice is don't make them more than 4 feet wide so that you can reach in to the middle from both sides and never have to walk on it. The length is whatever you want or space you have . You might want to look at some of the square foot gardening ideas. I've put a link on for you. See the post by Jaxom. Good luck with the project.
Square Foot Gardening link

[Hazel at the Hill]

Good evening LL, and welcome to the Vine! Would suggest that with your (not wider than) 4' wide raised beds you sow along the SHORT edge e.g. a 4' row of carrots/lettuce/beetroot/turnip/radish etc etc is enough to be getting on with, and then you can repeat your sowings every 2 or 3 weeks for successive harvests!

Do suggest you do a cut and come again lettuce as a row of this just snipping off a few leaves at a time will keep you in yummy fresh leaves for ages!

Hope you enjoy yourself here at the vine - ask any q's you may have and the rest of us newbies will await answers from the clever grapes with you!

The most important thing is to enjoy your growing - do keep us posted with how you are gettin on!

[LostthePlot]

I have made my beds 'raised' by deep digging the soil to fluff it up first, made them 4' x 12' and gone all around the edge with a spade in straight down slices to make a gap between the edge of the path and the bed. Then I have put manure, compost, leaf mould whatever on top and just forked it lightly to incorporate it into the soil and I am just going to plant into this and let the roots do most of the work. I don't like the idea of boards as I have an idea they make good slug hidey-holes. That's only my opinion though - I shall probably be infested with the things regardless of what I do!

[johnty greentoes]

LL - welcome to the dark side.

I think you should measure the length of your arm and add a bit, then double it. That will give you the width and it mean that you won't every have to stand on the bed as you can reach and work the middle easily.

I'm quite tall so mine ar 2m wide.

[pigletwillie]

If you make all of your beds the same width you can make insect covers or cloches on frames that can be put onto any bed and it will fit. My cloche / cover frames are all 4' long as this is either half or a third of the length of a bed. This allows me for example to have two or three cloches on each bed, one may be keeping fly off carrots and another bringing on salad leaves.

Our first plot has 17 raised beds and all bar one are 4' wide, the odd one is 5' wide and is just that bit too broad to get at easilly from either side. So far slugs havent been an issue in the beds any more than on our non raised bed plots.

[Two_Sheds]

Be different - go for circular beds, (or mandalas). If you do a keyhole shape or a stepping stone in the middle you can reach all the crops without standing on the bed.