Starting out

[Determined Gardener]

Hi All,
I planted a few veg very late in the season for a bit of fun with my daughter. The radishes and lettuce are great and the pumpkin plants seem healthy but we had a few disappointments too. Carrot leaves are looking healthy. Runner beans have started to flower so we hold out hope for those. Tomatoes have not flowered and the sweetcorn didn't grow. We did plant everything very late so we should be very happy with the results.

It's been a great experience so far and harvesting lettuce and radishes for a salad was a proud moment and they tasted great. In all honesty I have enjoyed this more than my daughter and I'm very keen to progress this new interest. We have been tearing out lots of old overgrown shrubs and tidying up the garden and trying to figure out what to do with the space. I'm now keen to put a kitchen garden in at the end of the garden and could use some advice.

The area I've designated for the kitchen garden is 5mx5m. I understand the crop rotation methods so would divide this up into 4 areas and am keen to create these as raised beds. I'm thinking raised beds as I think it will be easier to manage, be able to get some better soil (not much growing at bottom of garden) and be able to make a feature out of the veg plot to keep the wife happy. I want to grow a variety of veg - carrots, sweetcorn, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, onions, cabbage etc and fruit

My questions are:
1. Is there any reason not to have raised beds?
2. What advice can you give me on what kind of soil / compost to fill the beds with? What soil prep do I need to do?
3. Is 5x5m plenty enough space to maintain a decent supply to our kitchen (2 adults and 2 children)?
4. Is a greenhouse a necessity? I'm thinking tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and growing from seeds (saving my windowsills)

My motivation for doing this is the enjoyment that we've had from growing a few veg, what we have harvested has tasted great, I think everyone with a garden should be growing some of their own veg so we are not reliant on our food being shipped around the country or across the world.

Thank you for taking the time to read this - I've waffled on a bit much here so appreciate it has been a lot to read.

[peter]

Expense, both of walls for the beds and the soil to fill them.
5x5 metres is one tenth of a full sized allotment and thus one rod in size. If you use "square foot" gardening techniques you will squeeze a higher yield out of it.
A four by one by quarter metre bed will eat a cubic.metre of topsoil which is what I would recommend. That is one of those big bags craned onto building sites by builders merchants and costs around £100.
It would need well rotted manure and possibly some sand adding and it will settle.
For comparison bagged potting compost comes in bags of so many litres, a litre is one thousandth of a cubic metre.

[Tony Hague]

1. Is there any reason not to have raised beds?
2. What advice can you give me on what kind of soil / compost to fill the beds with? What soil prep do I need to do?
3. Is 5x5m plenty enough space to maintain a decent supply to our kitchen (2 adults and 2 children)?
4. Is a greenhouse a necessity? I'm thinking tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and growing from seeds (saving my windowsills)

As well as the expense of raised beds, other downsides are that they tend to dry out quicker. Or if you are on heavy clay you could view that as a plus point. they drain more freely ... Also the edging materials can provide a slug and snail refuge. Remember that you can have permenent beds without them having edging of any sort, though they will tend to become a bit raised even if you don't intend it.
If the area has been old shrubbery, it is quite likely tired and compacted soil. Anyone who has dug a big hole will know that the spoil heap always ends up way bigger than they expected. Point being that if you dig the ground and incorporate lots of manure or garden compost (which I would imagine would help), the soil level will rise a fair bit, so you might not need to import as much topsoil as you think ..

Is 5x5 metres enough ? Well, with a family of four it won't consign trips to the vegetable isle of the supermarket to history. But you can concentrate on those things which are better for being home grown. Sweetcorn, climbing french beans and peas would be high on my list.

Suitable varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers can be sucessfully grown without a greenhouse, though the cucumbers will be a bit more rustic than glasshouse types, and tomatoes will have a short season. I have had a very good result with cucumbers in a cold frame made from recycled junk this year. Peppers need quite a long season and I think it would take a good year (and location) to get a useful result outdoors. You will at least need a sunny windowsill (or a conservatory to invade) to start off any of these tender crops though.

Good luck !

[Nature's Babe]

Determined Gardener wrote:
1. Is there any reason not to have raised beds?
2. What advice can you give me on what kind of soil / compost to fill the beds with? What soil prep do I need to do?
3. Is 5x5m plenty enough space to maintain a decent supply to our kitchen (2 adults and 2 children)?
4. Is a greenhouse a necessity? I'm thinking tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and growing from seeds (saving my windowsills)

Good luck with your new venture, In answer to your questions, now is a wonderful time to start and ( importantly ) to prepare for next year.

I Raised beds is a good idea, but make sure you can reach to the centre of the bed easily without walking on or compacting the soil. In a deluge water will run of onto the paths, however raised beds without any cover can get very dry in periods of drought. The other drawback is that wood or plastic to make the beds can be costly. It is possible to make raised beds without the expense of containment and this has the advantage that you can plant the sides as well as the top of the beds. It is also possible to prevent drying out in spells of drought by using a mulch and planting through the mulch,this is also helpful because it requires less watering and conserves water.
2 Any kind of soil can be made to work with the right care, equally the best soil can become hard to work if compacted or neglected, if you understand how soil and the organisms in it can work for you, then you will know how to get the best out of it.
Consider if you actually need to buy in extra soil, if you mark out the beds first you can take all the topsoil from your paths to raise the beds then put woodchip in your paths to allow free drainage and prevent muddied feet.
3.Consider perhaps 5 metres wide is too wide, it would be better to make two or 3 beds 5 metres long so that you can reach the centre of each one without treading on your soil and compacting it.
4. A greenhouse or polytunnel is a useful extra to extend the growing season, and for growing stuff in winter
5. If you are going to make permanent beds some rockdust would help to raise mineral content and give it a good kickstart.
6. before you decide on a method to suit you check out this video, it is a less labour intensive method of gardening, and less costly,
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 864235132#
7. I use straw to mulch with, about £1.50 a bale, a compressed bale goes a long way, then add any dried grass clippings, spent crops and dried non seeding weeds.
8. consider using some rootgrow when planting your seedlings to kickstart the natural mycelium in your beds. These assist your plants during drought and help plants flourish and resist disease.
9 start composting your kitchen waste and you can use finnished compost seived for seed trays and to pot up your seedlings, bought composts vary considerably in quality and can be expensive.

[Nature's Babe]

PS If you wish to get your daughters enthusiasm, give her a little patch of her own and a theme from a favourite story, with imagination it can be great fun, think jack and the beanstalk / runner beans, goldie courgettes sliced can be gold coins cinderella / pumpkins, I knew of one child friendly garden complete with yellow brick road/path tin man etc. Have fun, gardening should be fun, not just hard work !

[Determined Gardener]

Thank you everyone for your advice. Looks like I need to get on with clearing the area and start preparing the soil etc. I like the idea of a little patch of garden for my daughter too. Am sure she will love this.

[glallotments]

People mean different things when they talk about raised beds - I think of beds high enough to work from a standing position - I'm only small but on our site the 'raised beds' are only about 6" high nore boarded edging. Like these.
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_K_mHkDVeGVQ/TFQ7eOAqaeI/AAAAAAAAGXQ/ivpdenGrz9Q/Helmsley%20walled%20garden%20027.JPG

From my observations:
he wood only lasts for so long before it starts to rot.
People still try to dig and find it difficult.
Weed growing around the edging aredifficult to remove.
Beds dry out quickly.

We have beds cut into grass paths which do need some maintenance but it works for us.

Raised beds not edged beds are good though if you garden on soil that becomes waterlogged.

[Determined Gardener]

Yes - I meant raised beds as per your photo. I should have mentioned before that the garden had a solid clay bed about 50cm down and does become waterlogged in the winter although the area that I am thinking for the veg garden doesn't suffer the water as badly as the rest of the garden.

I've also just read a few articles about the wood used for raised beds - tanalised wood leaches chemicals such as arsenic into the soil and it should be avoided for veg patches. Any views on this??? Most wood for outdoors use is now tanalised...

[Johnboy]

Hi Determined Gardener,
The information you have been reading with regards to Tanalized wood is many years out of date. Arsenic was removed when the Tanalizing process was reformulated a long time ago to fall in line with safety regulations.
There is no reason why tanalized wood should not be used for raised beds.
JB.

[glallotments]

You could line the boards with the plastic that the compost was bought in so that you can conserve more moisture and also protect the wood a bit.

[freddy]

Hi Determined Gardener,
The information you have been reading with regards to Tanalized wood is many years out of date. Arsenic was removed when the Tanalizing process was reformulated a long time ago to fall in line with safety regulations.
There is no reason why tanalized wood should not be used for raised beds.
JB.

Hi Johnboy. I'm glad to hear that, because I used Tanaized for my raised beds. Was a bit worried there

Cheers...freddy.

[Nature's Babe]

ps, your daughters patch could also be a good learning curve about nature
if you include a themed insect house she can learn which are the gardeners friends and what flowers attract them etc. BTW did you find the time to watch the video I posted? In it you will see raised beds can work really well without the expense of wood sides.

[Determined Gardener]

Hi Nature's babe.
Yes, i did watch the video you posted and found it interesting and looks a great ecological solution. If I had a huge amount of land I think I would be going down that route. Our garden isn't that big and I don't have a separate allotment. Now for the honesty bit which might mean I am cast out for not being serious enough about my kitchen garden.... it really does need to look good as well as be practical. As I said the garden is not huge and I want the kitchen garden to look like a relatively attractive feature - I think it will blend into the garden much better with the raised flower beds. This does not detract from my intention to do a good job of growing my own veg though.

[Determined Gardener]

Forgot to say, it's funny you mentioned an insect house as I was looking at a bee's house at the garden centre yesterday. I thought that it would be a good idea to encourage some bees into the garden. It's a shame we got rid of the pond recently as we had lots of frogs to keep some of the pests at bay - all the frogs moved next door so hopefully they will still come over the fence to eat some of the pests.

[Nature's Babe]

Lucky you,to have lots of frogs! Open flowers among the veg help the attractiveness factor and attract the beneficial insects, things like borage,
forget me not, marigolds are good companions for tomatoes, and nasturtiums will attract pests away from your veg. Also if you let herbs flower the beneficial insects love that.