Magazine - BUILD A RAISED VEGETABLE PATCH
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By Dr Colin Mumford in Tip of the Day on 9th Jan 2012 11:45
Get ready for the spring and start growing your own vegetables to beat these austere times.
Why have raised vegetable patches?
Raised vegetable patches have a couple of advantages over traditional patches that are formed at ground level. Here are a few of them:
1) The soil in a raised bed warms up quicker in spring, enabling you to have an early crop.
2) You don't need to bend down too far, which is very important for the elderly or anyone with limited mobility. It also reduces the potential for back ache.
3) Reduction of pest incidence, as it can be difficult for many pests to get to an island bed. Plus it is easier to apply things such as copper banding on the sides to prevent slugs and snails getting to your prized vegetables.
4) Less windblown debris finds its way onto the vegetable patch as leaves, grass litter, weed seeds and the like will collect at the base of the side walls.
Are they expensive to make?
Depends on your budget. The raised patches in the picture on the right (click for greater detail) cost just £12 each to make. Making a raised vegetable patch from brick, block work, or railway sleepers would cost considerably more, but are likely to last longer.
So how did you make a raised vegetable patch for £12?
Sourcing cheap materials is the key. The vegetable patches are made from old scaffolding boards. These can be bought cheaply from a scaffolding contractor as they are boards that are deemed no longer safe to use in scaffolding. This is usually due to them having a split, or a section cut out to accommodate the scaffolding, or if they have become slightly warped, or are thought to be weakened.
The scaffold boards are approximately four metres long and 0.3 metres wide. The scaffolding company I went to sold them for £2.00 each as scrap wood, but the price depends on supply and demand, and how urgently the scaffold company wants to get rid of them. The vegetable patches required five to six boards (depending on the boards condition), which resulted in the £12.00 cost.
The side boards were left at full length, whereas the end boards were cut to a length of one metre. Odd cut out areas on the boards were patched with a bit of old lino, found in the shed, to stop soil falling out of the side of the boards. The vegetable patches were made two boards high, making them come up to roughly knee height. Another reason for having the raised patches this high is because they were placed directly on top of a tarmac surface, therefore the extra height was required to achieve a good depth of soil. The boards were nailed together with four inch nails, sourced from an old tin in my shed.
Filling up with soil
The soil to fill the vegetable patches came from a mixture of spoil left over from digging out a pond, old soil from replanting pots, and from the compost heap. Make no mistake, it required a lot of work to dig up and fill the wheel barrow at one end of the garden, and then empty the barrow at the other end of the garden into the raised patch. If you are lucky you'll have a mound of old soil right next to where you want to place your raised patches.
The old heavy clay soil from the pond was put in the bottom of the raised patches. This was okay as it would provide the dual purpose of retaining some moisture at depth, and if managed properly would provide a good free draining soil structure. This may sound a bit strange, but clay soils can be some of the easiest to manage, especially in raised beds as they will be more affected by hard winter frost, which will break up any large clods through a combination of frost heave and frost action. Besides, the clay dominant soil was the only free soil I had available at that time, and was used to bulk out the lower levels of the beds.
The upper layers of the raised patches were filled with a mixture of compost, old soil, and topsoil sourced from digging out the pond. Pelleted chicken manure was mixed in with the soil to make it a bit more fertile.
It is important to note that the soil was spread in layers of approximately six inches deep, and then was lightly trod down to consolidate the soil. This would minimize settlement (the soil sinking) at a later date. Each layer was raked to produce a tilth before the next layer was spread. Failure to do this will result in an interface between each layer which will impede drainage and root extension. The soil was brought to within four inches of the top of the scaffold boards. This provides a lip around the vegetable patches to retain the soil. If the soil was filled to the top of the boards it would eventually spill over the sides every time you dug the soil or pulled up a vegetable.
How long will they last?
The raised patches have been in service for approximately three years now. They have provided a wealth of food. Everything from peas and carrots to potatoes and leeks have been grown with great success. The scaffold boards still look in good condition, and should last at least another three years before I need to look at replacing or repairing the boards. All I need to do now is to decide what to grow this year.
For help with what to plant and when, go to the 4scapes vegetable planner.
Read more articles in Tip of the Day, by Dr Colin Mumford or from January 2012.
