Slightly raised beds

[Greenleaves]

In order to manage the allotment better I am contemplating building 12 slightly raised beds for treated 150mm x 25mm timber.

if I make them 3m x 1.4m they will take up approximately two thirds of the plot. The method to my madness is that it will reduce digging and aid in crop rotation.

Have I got the sizing right? Should they be bigger or smaller?

Any advice as always great fully received

Mike

[KarlB924]

I wouldn't make them too wide, I had 1.2m wide raised beds on my plot and when kneeling down, I struggled to reach much more than halfway over without reeeaaally stretching (but I'm not exactly tall). If you're doing pretty long beds you need to be able to stretch over a fair bit, to avoid having to walk around or walk over the bed if for example, you drop something! To work out how wide you want the beds I'd recommend kneeling at a fixed point, say a doorframe, and placing a small object about as far as you comfortably want to stretch to plant something out. Work out that distance, half it and add that to the total width and round up to the nearest 10cm. Then you've got a bed that you can comfortably plant into the middle and still stretch over if you need to.

Bed length doesn't matter, but you definitely want paths wide enough to walk down with a wheelbarrow, avoiding the inevitable crop overhang. I presume you're either having the paths as grass, or weed matting and mulch?

[Greenleaves]

Paths are planned at a metre and will be weed suppression and mulch. Thank you for the input

[KarlB924]

No problem, I did very similar to what you're planning, and it's good to get everything right before you even start cutting

[Kristen]

I have "slightly raised beds" - in fact they started as "lazy raised beds" - no timber sides, just earth piled on the beds to raise them "a bit". The soil slips down the edges (and needs shovelling back up every other year, or so), and you can't plant right on the edge, but they were cheap

I dug the paths out and put the soil on the beds - that was it but, on my very heavy clay, those few extra inches created enough additional drainage to make a significant difference. I now (5 or 6 years later) have smart boards around them

Mine are 4' wide - maximum reaching distance from either side. I would go for the widest that you can sensibly reach, and it gives you more cropping-area to arrange inter-planting-distance to suit the crop. I plant most things using a staggered pattern, rather than single/double rows like conventional beds, and there are various patterns that fit my bed width that I have adopted - I just think that much narrower and I would have fewer options in that regard.

My paths are the width that I can kneel in (knee-to-foot length important in that calculation) and get a barrow down.

Doing some measurements of your plot will probably give you a width of bed, and path, that neatly fits your plot.

Some passing thoughts:

I have a larger piece of timber at the Aisle-end of the beds (yeah, OK, it intentionally looks a bit fancy ) on which I have an upside-down [keeps rain out] A4 plastic wallet inside which is a list of the crops / varieties in the bed. (Where I have several varieties I plant them in alphabetical order, so that when the labels are lost I can work out which-is-which - but your level of OCD may be lower than mine!!)

I lined the timber, soil-side, with damp-proof-membrane - I wanted to keep any preservative chemicals in the timber out of the soil, and not have the soil in direct contact with the wood - hopefully lengthening its lifetime.

I have grass paths - because I prefer the look of them. Key thing for me is what picks-up on my boots in winter, and what happens when soil spills over the bed onto the path. For example, gravel or bark would be out for me, as it would get diluted by soil / leaves / junk in time and become a mess. Paving slabs / bricks etc. would probably be best, but I would need a lot ... i.e. too expensive

Controlling the grass between mowable area and edge of beds is a bit of a pain. Weedkiller will do that job, but most people I know don't like chemicals in the veg patch, let alone weedkiller ...

I have, sort of, made a wooden overlap in the corners of the timber bed-edging that I can hook a hose under so that it will stay guided and not snag across a bed decapitating all my veg! I say "sort of" as it wasn't in the original design and is a bit of a bodge. If I was doing it again I'd pay more attention to that.

My beds are long, and I have to walk around them. That was a conscious design decision, I just have one central path bisecting the beds / plot, but I figured the exercise was good for my wasitline! For anyone infirm then I expect that more gaps would be appreciated.

My beds run North-South. Tall, permanent, crops (like Globe and Jerusalem Artichokes, as well as Rhubarb and Comfrey) are at the North end.



You may be able to see the curved wooden end-piece, at the far end of the third-from-right bed - the "contents list" is on the far side of that!!

Also please note the DPM lining the timber

In the distance, and other side of greenhouse, I have about 16 beds in total ... so, for me, its a pretty decent sized area.

[Chippy Minton]

Wow Kristen love it!

My only addition, I have 6' x 4' beds (1.8m x 1.2m for the young amongst us), because 4' is the right width to reach across and 6' is the length of the bits of wood I bought I used cut down fence posts for the corners but in version 2 I left them just lower than waist high to allow me to attach netting, fleece etc. to keep the interesting and diverse pesky wildlife off me crops However for the longer beds at the lottie I'm looking at the water pipe solution

[Kristen]

... to attach netting, fleece etc. ... I'm looking at the water pipe solution

Here's my Water Pipe Solution

Brassica Netting – against Cabbage White Butterfly | K's Garden

[Greenleaves]

Amazing Kristin, not quite sure mine will be to your standard but it definitely food for thought, thank you

[Kristen]

not quite sure mine will be to your standard

Tut!Tut!

'Tis only water pipe, some short canes, and debris netting - no skilled craftmanship involved, I can assure you!!

[Greenleaves]

You have not seen my handywork! I make Mr Bean look like a craftsman!

[Snadger]

I find the exterior measurement of the width of my beds has to be 4 foot or 1 metre. I made the mistake once of making this the internal measurement then used bricks and breeze blocks to surround. I found i couldn't reach to the centre from the sides
My whole plot is divided up into 4 foot beds then 2 foot paths ad infinitum in a 'potager' style complete with 10 foot diameter herb wheel in the centre!

Maximum length of my beds are 10 foot which saves me walking around them or clinbing over them!

[Snadger]

Here's one I did earlier!

PS That was 5 years ago at the beginning. Everything has matured now and is complete although I have no recent piccies.
I just added surrounds as I aquired them.