Selfsufficientish.com

I'd love to have raised beds in my garden. Everything I read suggests raised beds are easier to care for and give better yields but when I read how to make them I get scared. It seems like a lot of work and expense and I know I'd mess it up. I've seen raised bed kits online which get past the DIY issue but not the expense.

I live on my own and don't really have any friends who'd have the skills to help and my DIY skills are not just zero they are negative.

Is there any cheap and simple way to make raised beds? (And when I say cheap I mean no more than £20 for three or four beds)

I have seen raised beds made in various ways, the most interesting being wine bottles, have to drink a lot of wine but it looked really good. Theres always good old sleepers, but heavy, can be expensive and need to be careful to get the untreated ones(cant remeber what its called sorry),
we have used old pallets taken to pieces and reassembled, got the pallets from Freecycle and and got a friend to hammer a few nails in, in the right places

http://www.self-sufficient.co.uk/Raised-Beds.htm

Best of luck

See if you can get some wood via freecycle or skips (ask if you can take it though). You need to decide your dimension - the length doesn't matter but make sure it's no wider than 4 feet - otherwise you can't easily reach the middle. The wood you get will also dictate the shape. you need 4 chunky (2"x2") pieces of wood to knock down into the four corners and then screw your wood to them.

It's not too difficult, you need a saw, screws and screwdriver and that's pretty much it.

Hope that helps - not sure I described it very well.

you can do deep beds without having to put wood around the edge. On my plots I have 6 raised beds that are very productive. In the Self Sufficient Gardener John Seymour gives a very good method for digging them.

MikeM wrote:you can do deep beds without having to put wood around the edge. On my plots I have 6 raised beds that are very productive. In the Self Sufficient Gardener John Seymour gives a very good method for digging them.

MikeM,

That sounds perfect. Do you have a link to a website or book that could help me with this method. I'm no good at DIY but I'm not scared of hard work as long as it's not complicated. Hard work is good exercise. :)

Thanks,
Becky

I was just looking at them myself for a friend. and interestingly the adverts top and bottom have suppliers.

I found that www.harrodhorticultural.com have for example 4"x8" by 6 inch for £27 which is the cheapest I have seen. other than that it is recycle pallets, which are free and are approx 4"x4"

now I am off to dust off my John Seymour book because I can't remember what that option looks like.

Hi
You don't actually have to edge them with anything. Just gently slope the sides upwards. Once you've laid the beds out you can always build the sides up as you find suitable materials.

You could try weaving willow prunings to make a fence - you can do this with apple prunings as well. Possibly use something less attractive, such as plastic bottles, inside to give a bit more support.

You could just place old bricks on the ground. You could only really use one layer but it would edge the bed. The Victorians used to put them at 45 degrees to the ground - very pretty.

I've seen some very attractive raised beds made with logs. Just place them around the edge of the bed. You can build them up by placing a batten (a thin piece of wood) up the back and nailing in place.

If you slope the edging in towards the soil, the edging and the soil will sort of support each other. Just be careful not to stand on the edging or you will dislodge it.

Just look around you and see what you can find. Do you have any old roof tiles lying around in the garden? You can partly dig them into the ground to get them to stand up.

Good luck
Zoe

So I what? Dig the soil from where the paths will be and just mound it where the beds will be and mix in compost and organic fertilizer? So it's similar is principle to ridge and furrow (except with beds rather than long ridges?) That sounds simple enough. Or am I missing something?

Becky

that's about it becky, - if your soil is poor or shallow then dig it deep first and add as much organic matter as you can. It's nice to have some sort of surface on the paths so you can get on them when it's wet. In my opinion that's the main advantage of having beds, you're not so restricted by weather and soil conditions.

Becky,

Make friends with a local roofer & ask him/her for old tiles to edge your beds with.

Small paving slabs, (or broken ones, broken side into the ground) could be an other option.

The big white bags that gravel comes in can be filled with soil/compost mix for instant no-DIY beds.

You're just looking for summat to hold the soil slightly above ground, so old brick could do, laid at a 45* angle to give a pretty herringbone edge..

Or how about an old bath?

Once you start thinking about it there are a few things you could use with-out ever going near the dreaded screw-driver.

Good luck,

MW

If you live near the coast go beach combing. If you are lucky you mat well find some mooring rope. About 3 - 4" dia. it's ideal for edging a bed. Also keep your eye open for any otther goodies. Be surprised what you can find. Especially with the kind of weather we've been having.

Pete

I once had to build a vegetable on very shallow stony ground that had been used only for pasture. So I used sods to make raised beds.

I just marked out where the bed was to go, and then cut all the ground inside the markers into sods. I used the sods like bricks to make walls all around the bed, turning them all upside down. Then I filled in the bed with seaweed and compost, and planted my veggies.

Of course, I had some problems the first couple of years with the grass from the sods trying to grow into my veggis, but I just kept weeding it out. and the soil level within the bed dropped as it settled. But that helped the bed to stay sheltered.

After a few years of use, it was almost impossible to distinguish between the original walls and the rest of the bed. By then the mounds were beging to be difficult to keep from spilling onto the pathways. But by then I had saved enough from growing my own food to buy timber to frame them up.

This I did by hammering in some fence posts all round, and then nailing slobs to them. No, I don't mean my children. Slobs are the slices taken off trees at the sawmill when they are making planks. They are the slices with the bark on them, and most sawmills sell them fairly cheaply.

A big lorry/tractor tyre,

Hi,
We have used old tractor tyres and also used reclaimed wooden pallets to make raised beds- both are very effective.
The pallets are a very easy option, just take apart and reassemble to meet your own requirements all that is required are pallets which you can pick up anywhere these days, hammer, saw and a bag of nails/screws and a screwdriver.

We made several planting boxes and a large intensive care box for more delicate plants and starting off wildflowers etc and because we live in an urban area have stained and stencilled them to fit in with the surroundings:we have also had enough to be able to pass on to like minded friends - so all in all very successful as our fruit and veg yield was quite acceptable .

I never really get why everyone is into raised beds. I can see a border would maybe limit the grass encrouching.. theres less edging..but must be more watering?

anyway, we have 9 large (28x12 ft) veg beds.. not raised.. we grow veg fine...so cheapest option is not to have them?

we also go in for the double digging as described by John seymore to set them up. and lots of compost put back on each year etc