Well managed raised beds are the easiest way to keep your soil really alive while producing the right conditions for healthy vegetables.
- Raised garden beds are never stood upon. The soil structure becomes soft and loose. The soil can more easily 'take in' (elements, minerals and dust) and 'give out' (waste products, odour and gases). This occurs with seasonal and temperature change.
- You never leave the soil exposed by keeping a covering of pea straw, pulled young weeds or similar around your vegetables. Beneficially damp conditions prevail in a mulched raised garden without extremes of wet and dry.
- When soil is not in use, plant out thickly in a green crop that is easily pulled out and laid on top as mulch when you are ready to use your garden again.
- Soil micro-organisms are most effective when there is a variety of mulches or fresh compost added regularly, providing plenty of raw materials. This action releases nutrients into the soil, needed for healthy plant development.
- Raised beds require no digging or use of tools. The disruption to the soil structure is kept to a minimum. The oxygen-loving micro-organisms can stay where they prefer to be; the anaerobic ones can remain deeper down. Their numbers remain high.
If we provide the right conditions, Nature does the rest.
Raised gardens when managed well become full of earthworms, which aerate the soil as they work, along with worm castings that are 7x higher in potash, 5x higher in nitrogen and 3x higher in magnesium than the soil the worms digested. (They come in to your bed naturally from the earth below)
USE NO ARTIFICIAL CHEMICALS Any artificial chemical or fertilizer destroys at least one part of this delicately balanced natural system and the general health of the ecosystem is drastically lowered, taking weeks or months to fully recover.
Likewise, never use chemically treated wood for your frames, as there is always some leaching into the soil.
HEALTHY SOIL HEALTHY PLANTS HEALTHY PEOPLE
If the soil is healthy, plants are less susceptible to disease; if we eat healthy food our immune system are also stronger!
Other benefits:
- Soil is warmer than the ground temperature (about 5 degrees. You can plant out a month earlier and can keep growing a month later.
- Your garden is never waterlogged and if mulched, less watering is needed.
- Paths are well defined so children can be taught to walk around them
- Fewer weeds. Those that do grow can be easily removed (best if they are left lying where they grew)
- Mimicking nature with new layers of mulches or green crops is light work
- Gardens can be built on top of any soil type, concrete, tables etc. Even on flat roof tops.
- Easier to manage for elderly or less-able folk and great for children!
How to set up a raised garden bed
Choose a sunny spot near your house to site your garden.
Materials Needed:
- Lots of old newspapers or plain cardboard
- Wood planks 20x3 cm approx ( 6" x 1" of 8" x 1" if you are thinking in inches) two planks 90cm to 120cm (think how far you can reach to get the the middle of your garden) and two as long as you want each garden plot to be.
- A few small wood stakes to hold it in shape.
- Sawdust or bark chips for paths
- 80 litres of pre-made compost or good topsoil per square metre of garden bed orr a trailer-load of mixed compost materials if you are making your compost directly in the bed.
STEP 1
Cover base as is with 3mm thick paper/ cardboard(overlapping so that there is no chance of anything growing through it) This can be directly over lawn, old garden beds, over weedy patches. No need at all to weed first as the soil microrganisms will feast on the decaying vegetation and will compost them with your cardboard or other base materials. Extend 30cm beyond your garden bed frame if you want paths. Extend 5 cm if you don't.
STEP 2
Place the nailed-together frame and stake the corners in the inside and if longer than two metres stake both sides in the middle of the length boards.
STEP 3
Fill with ready-made compost or
Create a large new compost heap in your bed up to one metre high and cover with sacks or similar.
STEP 4
Make a 3cm thick layer of sawdust or bark chips on paths if desired.
STEP 5
If pre-made compost is used you can plant seedlings or sow seeds immediately.
Or after three weeks turn your compost, putting the outside in; ready to plant in approximately 6 weeks.
Don't worry if it isn't completely broken down. Small plants will still thrive in this mix - add a small layer of seed raising mix if you want to plant seeds in it at that stage.
After a few months the cardboard will have rotted away and the healthy soil will be ready to grow deep-rooted veges as well.
