Landshare

There’s every reason to love raised beds: put a simple border around your veg patch and every aspect of growing your own food somehow becomes easier. If the idea of sawing, nailing and leveling seems like a palaver, be assured it’s a molehill of work up front that saves a mountain of messabout later on.

The edging boards present a strong first line of defence to encroaching weeds and putting sides on your plot will invite piling more compost in – a big plus. If your soil is anything but the perfect loam (ie roughly equal sand, silt and clay) then raised beds allow you to redress the balance either by adding some of the lacking portion and/or adding compost. Drainage is instantly improved and raising the plot allows the soil to warm up quickly in the spring, letting you get sowing, and therefore harvesting, a little earlier.

Raised beds are a piece of cake to make. Measure you beds and map out a plan on paper. Your boards should be a minimum of 10cm tall, and 2.5cm wide, and make sure the short sides are constructed from one piece of wood for strength. You’ll need stakes to secure the planks – one every 1.5m or so minimum, and one or two in each corner. Whether you ‘pinch’ the planks in place by having stakes sunk in either side or simply screw them together is up to you. The height you build the edges to is also up to you – anything from an inch or use substantial wood (around 4 inches wide) to create beds up to thigh high and you’ll not only provide yourself with a bed to grow dangling plants over the side, you’ll also give yourself some seating into the bargain.

There are many sources for your wood – recycled scaffolding boards are cheap and easy or try a local sawmill. Douglas fir is relatively cheap and ages beautifully - it’s one of the harder softwoods and so lasts for years without the chemical pressure treatments that are not ideal next to your growing food. If you’ve a few more pounds to spend, little beats the English hardwoods, such as oak.

Although raised beds save you time in the long term, you can even shortcut a little more right up front. Simply mark out the area you want for you veg plot and cover it with thick cardboard (eg the packaging that freezers etc come in), edge with wood at least 6 inches high, and fill in with compost and/or topsoil. You can sow or plant straight into this and as your plants grow the cardboard will kill off the grass, in turn breaking down as your plants grow into and through it: voila, trouble-free raised beds without removing the grass.

You can even buy your own kits for raised beds from places like www.linkabord.co.uk. Unpack them and within 15 minutes you are up and running. They’re especially good for growing on concrete, and if you’re time poor. They’re also a good investment as you can simply dismantle them and move them to another location.