Why plant in raised beds?

[Zana]

Originally Posted by huntsman

Keen on a loan??

Zana, most of our timber here is pine, unless you decide to mortgage the castle,* so I'll have to treat it with something, I'm sure...

Have a great day!

*local expression meaning you will pay big bucks!

You can still use pine, Paul, but it won't last as long. But I'd be wary of treating the wood with any preservatives that may leech into the soil and thereby effect your tomatoes or other crops.

And for the record, I knew what ya meant the first time. LOL....as a part Brit and having had a form flatmate in London (UK) from Jo'burg and with having quite a few relatives in yr neck of the woods or veldt and with a bro-in-law born in RSA, I think I can muddle through most of what you might use here LOL s'all right.

[Zana]

Originally Posted by TomatoDon

Zana, I am now casting my vote for you as Tenacious Raised Bed Gardener of the Year, 2009. I believe you take your raised beds seriously! Great story!

DS

Nahhhhhh....I'm not. But thanks for the vote! LOL

My grandfather used to say that necessity wasn't the mother of all inventions, laziness was. I would prefer to be able to reuse those raised beds or reconfigure them as need be, rather than have to junk them and replace them. By storing them over the winter the wood lasts longer too. All the gravel ends up in some rubbermaid bins too. When I built them to begin with...(with a few modifications over different model years ...LOL), it was with the idea that I wasn't planning on living with my parents long term as I was in grad school at the time. I figured I'd be able to reassemble them elsewhere. Each year for 4 years I added another bed, so it didn't break a student's budget. I supplemented that by finding various pots/containers at curbside on garbage/rubbish collection days or being gifted large round rubbermaid containers with the rope handles. LOL I think its the frugal Scot in me that makes me look for cheaper ways of doing it.

[salix]

Huntsman - just one other thought. Check that the polyacrylamide crystals are approved for use with food crops. Some are OK, apparently - others are not recommended. Personally I use them only for ornamentals in pots...

[habitat_gardener]

Originally Posted by yotetrapper

Have a couple questions about raised beds. One, where do you all get your soil to fill them?....

I took over a small area from someone else at the community garden a few years ago, and she took the top 6 inches or so of the soil that she'd worked so hard to build. I was going to reconfigure the beds anyway, to make more growing space and fewer paths, and that made it easier. So I filled the beds with (a) homemade compost -- I've been making about 300 gallons a year from kitchen and garden waste, (b) free coffee grounds, mixed with soil and compost -- they form a waterproof layer if placed too thickly, but the worms love them and they add a few nutrients. I didn't make any special trips to get them, just stopped by a Starbucks whenever I passed one. (c) horse manure, from a huge mound at the community garden that year. In the winter I piled it up 8-16 inches thick and, when it was time to plant tomatoes in the spring, it had shrunk to half that. I made planting holes in the manure and filled them with compost, and I had very happy tomatoes that year. (d) mulch, which anyone in urban and suburban areas can get free from tree trimmers. I used the chipped branches as well as leaves I collected from neighbors and on freecycle. For planting areas, I usually don't add more than a couple inches, but when we've had leafier mulch available, I pile it on and it shrinks a lot by the spring, meanwhile making the worms happy and enriching the soil.

Google sheet mulching or lasagna gardening to get more ideas of what to add. You don't need to add layers in any particular order or use any specific amendments, in my experience -- just pile up what you can get and compost happens. This is a good time of year to add stuff, assuming you don't already have feet of snow on the ground and it's not too freezing cold to be working outside.

Another source of raised-bed fill is garden paths. You can dig garden paths to get your raised beds and then use the soil from the paths to fill the beds. Then, if the paths are much deeper than you eventually want, you can fill them with free mulch from tree trimmers.

One more thing that no one has mentioned is that raised beds don't have to be built with wood sides. At a garden fair this year, one of the sustainable gardening exhibits showed different ways to make raised beds:
-- pile up soil! the advantage is that you have more planting area on the curved surface than you would on a flat surface, and you don't need extra materials. The top of the bed was at least a foot higher than the path around it.
-- wood or wood-equivalent (Trex)
-- cinderblocks, especially if you want to make the bed higher (2 or 3 high) or have a sitting wall. They're modular, reusable, and last forever, and you can plant mints or strawberries in the cavities.
-- urbanite (chopped up pieces of concrete from sidewalks or road that were removed) to make a dry-stack wall, also can be used to make a sitting wall if high enough. Because they have uneven surfaces that lock together, it's more stable than a mortared wall if under 3 ft. high.
-- straw bales, or straw rolled into bundles called wattles, which are temporary. In this (summer dry) climate, they claimed the wattles would last 1-3 years.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by huntsman

WOWeee!

Lots of effort put into these replies and chats, and I have learned plenty!

Unlike Earl, my ground has all been hand dug to a depth of 4', and all roots have been removed and compost added, but because of this we have displaced several cubic meters of soil, so the raised beds idea is enticing...

Would I have to treat the wood and if so, with what?

B4 - Are the polyacrylamide crystals simply sown into the hole at time of planting? How much is sown? Tablespoon?

If I were building new raised beds now I would just buy heavy 2 x 8s or 2 x 10s that are already treated or use treated landscapping timbers that are already treated. Mine are over 30 years old and I'm sure what they were treated with is probably banned by now but they have held up quite well other than some warping over the years. Mine are rough cut 2 x 10s of pine cut at a small sawmill and taken to a lumber treatment plant 40 miles away and treated.

As for the water crystals I usually use the medium size and put several tablespoons into each hole and mix in well then plant. I also put a thin layer over the whole bed every few years and til it in. They have cut down on watering by about 30 to 40 percent and when you pull up a plant you will find the roots growing right through the gel formed by them when wet. They absorb a huge amount of water for their weight and if you put too much in a pot it will literally swell up and overflow the pot when they are fully watered. They are also helpful in times of too much water because they soak it up and stop the soil from compacting as much and make it workable much sooner after heavy rains.

[b54red]

For filling beds in quantity you need to see if there are any mushroom growers around where you can buy mushroom compost by the truckload. There is a dairy farm near me that sells a pickup load of manure for 20 dollars and they load it for you. Many small stables will give you all the horse manure your back can stand to load. Grass clippings and leaves can also be used. The more variety the better. The beds don't all have to be full when you start because you can keep adding each season til you reach the desired level. The worst thing about buying fill dirt is you can get some horrible weed infestations that take years of constant work to overcome. Be very careful about adding sand or very sandy soil because in a raised bed you can't keep sandy soil moist for very long and it takes a lot of work to amend it.

[amideutch]

This is the raised bed I made at work. Reason being our whole site sits on a bed of sandstone 6" below the surface. Used bricks from a nearby building they were gutting for the bed and added bagged soil from a nursery and horse manure and do so every year. I use a soaker hose to water and the side of the building acts like a heat sink which the tomato plants thrive on. And no, the 78 foot dish in the back ground has nothing to do with my success. The first picture showing the front view taken this year far left is Akers West Virginia PL and the plant in the middle behind the post is Toedebusch Pink and the plant on the far right is KBX which are all PL.

[huntsman]

Originally Posted by Zana

Nahhhhhh....I'm not. But thanks for the vote! LOL

My grandfather used to say that necessity wasn't the mother of all inventions, laziness was.

Ha, there was a man who cut to the chase!

Originally Posted by salix

Huntsman - just one other thought. Check that the polyacrylamide crystals are approved for use with food crops. Some are OK, apparently - others are not recommended. Personally I use them only for ornamentals in pots...

Yeah, good point, salix - thanks!

Originally Posted by habitat_gardener

Another source of raised-bed fill is garden paths. You can dig garden paths to get your raised beds and then use the soil from the paths to fill the beds.

Brilliant!

Originally Posted by habitat_gardener

-- cinderblocks, especially if you want to make the bed higher (2 or 3 high) or have a sitting wall. They're modular, reusable, and last forever, and you can plant mints or strawberries in the cavities.

That's for me! Plus it keeps my mint contained. Since I read Mischka's mint warning, I have been paranoid!

Fortunately for me, the holes that I have dug have yielded loads of extra soil, since I've trucked in around 10 tonnes of horse poo and compost for my veg patch. Only problem is the only space left for the raised bed(s) is in the garden which is really shady.

*Must be some veg suited to shade...(!)*

[sam123]

These are my raised beds which are 3.6 metres long and 1.8 wide. The height varies from .4 metres to .7metres. The reason why I made it 1.8 wide is so you can easily reach from either side.

[amideutch]

sam123, "Now that's what I call a Raised Bed". Good on ya. Ami

[huntsman]

Missed yours, amideutch, but like that of sam123, it looks great!

[roper2008]

Most of my raised beds are of cedar wood. I looks nice but can be
expensive. I also have one made of cinder blocks. Not so pretty, but
doesn't look bad because I plant flowers and parsley in the cinder block
holes. Tomatoes or peppers go inside the bed. As a matter of fact
I'm going to get more cinder blocks and make another bed.

[Duh_Vinci]

Ami - is there a place where you don't grow tomatoes? I've seen your containers, home (by the window) and even at work - oh my... That is what I call dedication!

Sam - very nice, rustic look to your bed. Not to change the subject - lemon cukes?

Regards,
D

[habitat_gardener]

Originally Posted by huntsman

Only problem is the only space left for the raised bed(s) is in the garden which is really shady.

*Must be some veg suited to shade...(!)*

Lettuces in the summer, if it's part shade in hot weather. Start a new thread! There are so many types of shade -- high shade, deep shade, morning shade, afternoon shade, seasonal shade...

[sam123]

Hi D,

The front cucumbers are Giant Russian and the back one is lemon. I normally only grow Lemon and Syrian cucumbers .The Photo of the raised bed was taken about 2 years ago. Since then I have build another one the same size and 3 not quite as long (2.4 m) or high (.2 to .5m) but I can easily raise the height by just adding another row of sleepers.

Peter