Grow Your Own Magazine

I am just about to build raised beds on my veggie plot. I have previously been overgrown by weeds and heard that raised beds were a good idea for many reasons so want to try them. What sort of compost should I put in the beds and should I lay some sort of fabric down before filling them, also what ideas do people have regarding the depth of the beds?

Regards

I have built raised beds on my lottie which had been very overgrown and also has rather poor chalky soil. They are about 6-8 inches deep and I did lay some weed suppressing membrane as a base. I filled them with mushroom compost, manure, old growbag compost. I grew cabbages, spinach, beetroot, leek, broad beans, onions, shallots, brussel sprouts, cauliflower etc. succesfully. I still got weeds forcing their way through but not too many. My hope is to eventually pull away the weed supprssing membrane after most of the weeds have given up (well, I'm hoping). For potatoes, carrots, parsnips I guess you'd need deeper beds.

I filled my raised beds with manure, old growbags & leafmulch to 6inches deep. I put cardboard down over the weeds. Now, a year later, the cardboard has rotted and the weeds died.

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You know you're a hard nosed gardener when you pull the weeds from others plots!

You can still grow potatoes even if you only have shallow beds by using the 'no dig' method. I used this last year, the beds are only 6" deep (Link a bord) with thick cardboard underneath to suppress weeds. Fabulous crop, and so easy to plant and harvest.

If you're not familiar with the method, here's a link for you How to grow potatoes without digging

Good luck

i got link-a-bords last year as part of my veg patch in my gardent, and put them on gravel site (so no membrane), first time growing my own veg so maybe hadn't thought this through properly!! I put John Innes No2 in in both of the raised beds.I had great crops. One of the beds is deep and the other is shallow, so giving me a bit of flexibility on crops to grow. Grew parsnips in the deeper bed, they were lovely. As you know, raised beds lose their nutrients, so this year am digging in home made compost and manure to improve the soil. I'm going to try and grow sweet corn in the deep bed this year - this may not be the right thing to do - but the deep bed is in a relatively sunny spot, so thought I'd give it a go! will update the forum if i've got any harvest!