Grow Your Own Magazine

We've just started off a veg plot at the top of our far-too-big gravel driveway - we'd have preferred allotment for social aspect but there wasn't a spare one and we're not patient! We thought about digging out the gravel but a test pit revealed nothing but rubble and rubbish underneath for at least 2 feet - great!

Our solution (as cheap as possible) was to use various sleepers we found in the hedges and make raised beds, two sleepers deep, which we've filled half with topsoil (which seems quite good but a bit dusty) and half with rotted cow manure (which was vastly cheaper than compost or horsepoo.)

We're a bit concerned about whether this is actually going to work - it's too late now I guess if it was the wrong thing to do, but we'd appreciate any thoughts about whether we'll be able to grow anything good, and what will work.

Grew squashes and courgettes in cow manure last 2 years on the heap and with excellent results. Am sure will work well for other crops too esp salad crops. Best of luck

Just by chance you seem to have hit on a winning combination. Raised beds - the higher and the more substantial the better. Manure - better rotted (fresh burns roots and kills plants) and cow manure is better than horse manure. (Cows having several stomachs, they tend to pass fewer weed seeds through intact.) Some crops don't like going into manured soil though - I don't think onions like recently manured soil, and carrots and parsnips tend to fork and grow coarse if the soil is too stony or too recently/heavily manured. So if you want to grow them, it might be a good idea to use the old scaffold pole trick - use it to take a core out, then backfill with a sand/compost mix, and sow the seeds/seedlings into that.
I'm so envious. You have the raised beds I planned on...and have thus far failed to come anywhere close to having !

Hi Candj Welcome to the Mad House sorry I mean Vine I put in raised beds as my 3' of yellow clay almost as bad as your 2' of rubble and there was no-way I could dig it! I agree with snohare but also had success with onions, soft fruit also doing well as they are shallow rooted. If you want to grow carrotts why not put a raised bed on your raised bed if you grow stump rooted varieties you would only need 6" to 8" Let us know how you get on

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It's not the growing old I mind but the growing stupid with it!

A 'drive' by its very nature will be very compacted. I just hope you don't end up with drainage problems, although water should be able to escape through the joints where the sleepers meet. Good luck with your project anyway!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

We did a very similar thing last year except our problem wasn't rubble - it was the worst clay daub you could possibly imagine. Anyway, we used a mixture of gravel (for drainage), top soil and cow manure (as we got it free from local farmers DYING to get rid of it) and we had BUMPER crops of potatoes, leeks, onions, all kinds of brassica, lettuces, peas... I wouldn't put carrots or parsnips into it but it worked well for everything else.

I bet your beds will work a treat in other words!

Good luck either way!

Welcome to the Vine CanJ, All should be well- particularly if cow muck was well rotted. Choose quick growing varieties and plant closely together in a raised bed. Good luck. As mentioned above, don't expect 3' parsnips and carrots, but you might even get away with paris mkt or similar.

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Paul

Welcome to the Vine CanJ.
I wish you well with your new raised beds.
Please keep us informed of the progress and perhaps some pictures also would be nice to see how you're getting on.
Lauren

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"A good gardener always plants 3 seeds - one for the bugs, one for the weather and one for himself.” - Leo Aikman
Lauren

Well rotted cow manure is wonderful. Come August when cows have been in adjoining field, I am out collecting.. hard work.. but it rots down over winter.. a little in bottom of tomato pots = great

Any of the squashes will like it, Spuds will be OK as well. Beans and peas don't need the muck as they make their own nitrogen but it will hold onto the moisture better so they'll enjoy that.

Brassica's (cabbage, Cauli's etc) don't need freshly mucked groung and they prefer more alkaline soil - the muck will make it acid. And as the others have told you Root veg you don't grow in freshly mucked soil either.

Snadger is right abut the drive way, you'd have done better to break the bottom up even if you left it rough as it could give you problems in the future but you will probably get away with it.

Now put your name down for a plot while you are doing this and you can make all your mistakes in private and impress them when you move on to it

Enjoy your gardening & the Vine.

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ntg

Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark.
A large group of professionals built the Titanic

http://grief-encounters.blogspot.com/

Wow - lots of replies - thanks everyone.

we did break the drive up first - it was gravelly not tarmaccy so not as compacted as it might be and also at the farthest possible part of the drive so probably didn't get too much car compaction.

Had allotment at last home which we loved with a passion but partly because we could walk to it with a barrow ful of tools which felt good! This place doesnthave that luxury so we're less keen. Not the same driving to it.