RAISED BEDS/HOW TO?

[spitfire]

I am planning on building raised beds in the spring, 4 beds, each 4x8. my question is this: I plan on using wood, 1x4x8. from the lumber store. each bed will be 8 inches deep (2 planks). do i need to treat the wood? or can i use them as is? also how long will they last if not treated? I plan on watering with PVC pipe that will have small holes in it and buried in the soil.
any one got any advice?

[JulieSherris]

Our beds are 9ins deep, 4 foot wide & 16 foot long... (cos that's how long the wood lengths were & Andy didn't want to cut too many!)
He put stakes into each corner & a further 2 each side, so that the wooden 'boxes' wouldn't be forced out by the weight of the soil.
Then he screwed the boards onto the stakes.... we painted them with wood protector - although I think they would have been ok for few years anyway, but Andy has to paint everything in sight!!

[spitfire]

LOOKS JUST LIKE I HAVE IN MIND WISH I HAD ROOM FOR AS MANY AS YOU HAVE I HAD THOUGHT ABOUT USING THE STAKES ALONG THE SIDES LIKE YOU DID AS I WAS THINKING THAT THEY MAY BUCKLE OUT FROM THE WEIGHT OF THE SOIL. I THINK I WILL LEAVE THEM AS THEY ARE AND NOT TREAT THEM, HOPEFULLY THEY WILL LAST A FEW SEASONS, WE WILL SEE. HOW DO YOU WATER YOURS?

[JulieSherris]

.........HOW DO YOU WATER YOURS?

Well!! We're having the worst floods in Ireland for around 25 years... watering isn't a problem!!
The plan was just to use a hose pipe - the pipe is buried underground from the mains tap to the veg garden & I clip it onto the stand & leave it awhile....

However, the reality is:


This is our driveway - I don't think we'll be parking the cars here for a few weeks yet!!

[MKG]

That's what I like to see - optimism in action. Here we have a very happy looking lady standing ankle deep in water and armed with ... a brush.



Mike

[JulieSherris]

Ahahaha!!
Mike, I had just been in the derelict behind me, brushing the water out & sweeping it outta the chicken house as well.....
It's been kinda.... interesting around here over the last few days, that's for sure!! But am going to stop complaining about our flood problems - we can cope.

On a sadder note.... the lady next door (58) took her granddaughter to school yesterday morning - got caught aquaplaning & smashed into a property wall along the way.... the funeral procession was tonight. (Edited to say: The little girl was fine)
Andy & I are feeling a LOT more respectful towards the adverse weather conditions now.

[Millymollymandy]

Gosh I was puzzling over what you were holding there, thought maybe it was a pitchfork and you were doing a Neptune impersonation.....

Anyway really sorry to hear about your neighbour. I had only heard about the floods in Cumbria - they said they had 200mm of rain in one day which is astronomical. We once had something like 58mm in 1.5 hours one summer and that was bad enough!

[foodinistar]

These are my raised beds, approx. 4' by 12' on the right and 4' by 8' on the left. They are two gravel boards (planks) high.



Our road is on a slope, from left down to right and everything has been levelled off at different heights. To save having to get in topsoil I decided to sink the beds one board below the level of the concrete path. The beds on the right have been put in position. The frames in the alcove on the left are yet to be sunk into trenches.

Rain has stopped play for the time being!

I will dig narrow trenches for the frames on the left, put the earth inside where the beds will be, lower the frames into position in the trenches, turn over the earth inside the bed, layer with large pieces of cardboard and then dig out the pathways between and around the beds on the right and put the soil (good soil this) from there inside the beds on the left. There is some remaining soil from digging out the trenches for the right-hand beds that is visible around the frames on the left. That and some very good soil that is piled up in the wide bed on the left and in front of the greenhouse by the compost bin will be used to fill and level all the beds at the end.

However... I wasn't able to stake the middle of the 12' lengths before filling those four beds with soil. I will only be able to do that properly when the soil around the beds has been dug out and, because the lengths have bowed badly (mainly because they were left a long time before fixing and had warped), I will need to dig out the soil from inside the bed in order to push the two lengths of wood back into position.

The frames were all constructed on the patio, using 3" by 3" poles cut to length for the corners (and a few inches taller than the frames). The completed frames were then taken up and into position - as you can see on the left-hand side - and see how the treated wood there has not weathered yet, like that on the right-hand side has.

Below are a couple of photos of earlier stages in the back garden's transformation.


Early garden reconstruction (retaining walls)


Ready to get rid of the very last bit of lawn

[Mal]

My allotment raised beds were gravel board based too - seemed to be the cheapest timber of roughly the right size I could get hold of. I had a lot of plans on the size, but eventually realised that 1 board long and half a board wide was going to be the most efficient.

I have set them one distance-from-my-knee-to-my-foot apart (about 18 inches) so that I can kneel comfortably between them and work in the soil. Glad I did too, makes life much easier.

Before I put mine in, I watched my allotment neighbour try his - he used really long stakes to fix the beds in to the ground, but our soil is so stony that the stakes twisted as they went in, pulling out the screws/nails. I've used a much smaller stake, only protrudes about 3-5 cm past the end of the board - it's really there to stabilise the bed and to give me something to put the screw in to - by the time it's full of soil, it's really not moving anywhere anyway. I also have a second one half way along the long edge, again just to provide stability against the weight of soil.

Finally, I have that black, woven geo-textile down on the paths, then coming up under the bed almost to the top to try to stop anything from going underneath and growing on the paths, and then any big stones from the beds end up on the path. Works okay, but still doesn't stop the persistent weeds coming through.

[foodinistar]

My raised beds are about 21" apart - comfortable for kneeling and standing a wheelbarrow.

4' wide is pretty standard because a person's comfortable reach is about 2' from either side.

The stakes will go about 6" into the ground, which is heavy, and clay below a certain depth.

Interesting to hear about your use of weed-suppressing fabric Mal. I was going to use that - and got five rolls at a bargain price. But I am now undecided on what to do as I want to use the paths as a further source of nutrients.

• use bark chips and leaves? - hopefully after a few years that would rot down and I could dig it out as a good fibrous mix for the garden
• let weeds grow there? - let them get the nutrients up from deep-down and put them in a composter
• sow and harvest green manure?

[noodles]

wow, those gravel board beds look great. might well nick that idea. I am going to put weed-proof matting in between my beds too, then cover that with chippings. Hope it works. Is 4ft and 12 ft
a standard size for gravel boards?

[MuddyWitch]

We used 6'' by 2'' and made our beds 4ft by 12 ft. Any wider than 4ft & you can't reach the middle, any longer thn 12 ft & I'd be tempted to 'nip across'

Our original beds were made with old floorboards, but they rotted after a few years so we went for the heavier-duty stuff. They are still (five years on) in such good condition we'll be taking them to Ireland with us. The big advantage of the thicker wood is no staking is required.

I have several friends who have made their raised beds from old scaffolding boards, apparently the concreat & mortar help to preserve them, though I'm not sure I'd like that on my veggies! An other friend has used excess decking boards.

MW

[A&A]

Julie: your beds look superb - a real labour of love if I remember correctly having read many moons ago how your husband insisted on sieving all the soil ;) Hope the rain calms down for you - you could send some our way if you like!

Foodinistar: Inspirational use of the backgarden. Do you think you'll ever miss the lawn? In fact, don't answer that

I wish we could have used wood in some respects - it would have saved me a ton of time! We did it with concrete blocks in the end - 1m long, 24cm high, 8cm across and weigh a ton! I've put in the smallest footings I could get away with (hopefully) but by my reckoning, they should last forever. I honestly don't like concrete for a multitude of reasons, but it's doing a damn good job already and the fact that it won't rot, won't ever need treating and is solid enough for us to sit on, has made the outcome much better than expected. The idea for using them came from the local tobacco farm's polytunnels & then a local nursery's tunnels - where they've been in use for decades.

The reason I was talked out of wood here was because of the climate. All the locals told me it would last 2 years and then be done for. They said the very hot summers combined with very wet winters & constantly wet soil would rot them like paper. The rampant woodworm that are everywhere, would seal their fate. However, I bravely ignored the advice initially and went looking for scaffolding boards. Hmmm - everywhere here, they now use metal boards - I couldn't find a single wooden scaffolding board anywhere. A local wood yard offered me all kinds of stuff - not pressure-treated however, but it would have cost 4 times what the concrete blocks cost So, concrete it was. We'll just have to see how it fares up and how the plants hold up being in them.

I haven't done much with the outside beds yet - still too busy landscaping it all, but they'll be the same as the centre bed in the polytunnel. I've posted this before - but for the benefit of those who haven't seen what I'm talking about:

[JulieSherris]

Julie: your beds look superb - a real labour of love if I remember correctly having read many moons ago how your husband insisted on sieving all the soil ;) Hope the rain calms down for you - you could send some our way if you like!

You really don't mean that - especially today!
Hubby left for work this morning at 6.45am... he returned 3 hours later, after trying every which way he could think of.... and failed.
His company have said that if he can get in tomorrow morning, they have provisionally booked a load of hotel rooms, in case the workers can't get home again after the forecasted weekend rainfall

[The Honk]

wow, those gravel board beds look great. might well nick that idea. I am going to put weed-proof matting in between my beds too, then cover that with chippings. Hope it works. Is 4ft and 12 ft
a standard size for gravel boards?

Do you mean wood chippings or stone chippings? I used wood chippings last year and they looked nice and were easy on the feet and knees but it is all rotting now and needing to be replaced. I'm thinking of concrete cos of low maintainance and self cleansing