Raised beds

[Marge]

I help out at a gardening club where there is a raised bed system. I was wondering what to do about the level of soil/compost in the beds? The thing is we have planted cabbages, potatoes etc in various beds but now the soil/compost level has sunk down quite a bit.

I am concerned this will affect the veggies. Should we add more compost to the beds now or wait until the plants have matured?

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Marge, i suppose it depends on how deep the soil is in the raised beds to start with.
If it is a fair depth, say nine inches or more, i wouldn't worry too much.
If their is less than that, you could earth the potatoes up using bought in compost or the like, with the cabbages, etc, you could add a small amount of compost several times as the plants grow.

Don't forget raised beds don't have to be full to the top straight way, infact if i had them, i would start off with the soil level low and build it up over the years with homemade compost and manure.

Hope you can understand what i'm trying to say.

[Mike Vogel]

Earthing up potatoes in raised beds can be a problem. If spuds are planted too close together, raking up the soil can simply exose the tubers at the side to light and thus cause them to grow green. This happened to me 2 years ago when I had planted maincrop rows slightly too close together.

Last year I used lots of old straw and newspapers to cover the ground and this had the effect of mulching as well as protecting the tubers. So if you can get your hands on large quantities of newspaper, I would try this way of "earthing" up. You are also collecting valuable carbon for the soil or compost heap later on.
Good luck
mike

[John]

Hello
I agree with Mike about earthing up potatoes. I grow a few really early potatoes in a cold frame each year and earthing them up just isn't practical so I use a thick layer of straw. This works well and its easy to scrabble about under the straw and you usually easily find the tubers just below the soil surface.
The last load of bales I got a few weeks ago cost £3.50 each.

John

[Johnboy]

Hi Mike,
The answer to you problem is to stop trying to get a quart into a pint pot!
The tendency is to squeeze thing too tight and this gives rise to lack of soil, lack of ventilation and then you are a sure candidate for a visit by Blight and many other plant maladies.
I know I have no worries with regard space but I just fail to see the point in cramming things together when for the sake of spacing things out properly you will probably increase your yield and not give yourself the problems.
Raised beds seem to me to have to many restrictions.
I use designated beds which really only define the paths but timber edged and because they are only naturally raised as the years have gone by but if necessary by removing the paths I can combine two or maybe even three beds for a season with very little hassle to give me a growing area of 17ft x 33ft and convert back very easily the following season but not so with raised beds.
JB.

[Mike Vogel]

I don't suppose it really matters whether the beds are raised or not, but the advantage of them is that you raise the soil by piling compost or whatever on top of the soil. The sides then stop the stuff falling onto your paths. The recommendation is that because the rich soil is deeper you can pack more in without excessive competition. But on the whole, I don't think they are suitable for potatoes other than earlies. Ideally I would have a set of raised beds and a pert of the allotment more traditional and have 2 separate rotations for crops which are suited to one method or the other. One day when I have nothing to do except tend the plot .....
mie

[Johnboy]

Keep dreaming Mike
What really gets me is that people will put masses of effort into making and buying in soil for raised beds without even trying to use the soil right under their noses! They look upon digging as such a chore they put twenty times more time and effort and expense making raised beds.
To me it is totally foolhardy.
JB.

[Mike Vogel]

Ah, now we are getting into the question of dig/no-dig. The defenders of no-dig say that the method of piling the compost on top and letting the worms do the biz is more in accordance with nature's way. Butit stands to reason that the more matter you put into the bed, the higher the soil will rise, and my own view is that the sides of the beds are there to stop the soil falling onto the paths and that it doesn't really matter whether one digs the beds over or not. I don't want to abandon the digging, as it keeps me fit!

[Johnboy]

Hi Mike,
No it's not a case of dig/no dig the designated beds merely define the paths and the beds are edged with 4" x 1" Tannalised timber. They are allowed to rise to the top of the 4" and then I take soil out and add to beds that are not quite so full. I suppose that is not too good for the rotation system but I transfer soil with half a mind on it.
I have seen raised beds almost 3' high which to me are totally ridiculous and one had runner beans on the top! Totally stupid! The people had imported 20cu yards of soil of total crap quality and I know that the original soil is very fertile and very easy to work. I had helped the previous owner out by digging their plot for them.
There are many things gardeners do against the supposed best practice and mine is to have a permanent bean bed for I should think damn near 20 years and when the bed is finished with for the season I spread with FYM, allow it to become saturated by the weather, then cover with HD Black Polythene and uncover the following season and the worms have generally done their bit and I simply rake off the bits the worms didn't manage and give a very light forking over. In with the bean trellis, plant up with the pot grown beans, and they are three feet up the pole in just over a week from planting out! The weather has help immensely this year.
Rain alternating with sunshine is super for the plants but sadly also for the weeds. I strimmed the nettles down on the headland of the field the other side of the hedge three weeks ago and they need doing again now.
JB.

[Marge]

Thankyou for all the tips and information. At the gardening club we managed to top up one of the raised beds using top soil taken once a nasty shrub no one liked was removed. The soil underneath was beautifully crumbly so we added some of that instead of buying extra top soil/compost.

Also I hadn't thought of mulching potatoes with newspaper or straw. I think this is an excellent idea and I shall defo put this into action at the next club meeting

Apart from one other person (apart from myself) all the club members are novice gardeners and I am so pleased to have this forum to ask questions on, as very often I don't know the answer to their many questions!

[FelixLeiter]

At the gardening club we managed to top up one of the raised beds using top soil taken once a nasty shrub no one liked was removed. The soil underneath was beautifully crumbly so we added some of that instead of buying extra top soil/compost.

It might look all right, but I don't suppose there's a lot of nutriment in there if a shrub's been growing in it for years.

I don't see that you need to top the soil up if it's subsiding evenly. That is, if the soil and the crops growing in it are sinking at the same rate, I can't see any great calamity is going to befall your vegetables. A well-nourished soil sinks naturally as the organic material in it decomposes. I would cover your developing potato tubers with newspaper, grass clippings (which can reduce scab) or some such. You'll get nice clean tubers that way, too. Unless the roots of your crops are actually getting exposed (which I doubt) then I wouldn't top it up.

But all told, I'm with JB as far as deep beds are concerned. Designated beds, yes, with a wooden border and all, which may get raised over years as organic matter is added, but not ones where soil's brought in. I've seen far too many go wrong, and end up being ultimately more of a faff than was ever intended. They dry out very quickly, don't you know.

[Compo]

I don't know what all the fuss is about, everything in allotments is hard work, raised beds or not. You dont need to pile up to make raised bed you need to dig down, if you excavate a path and put the excavated material to the side of that path, you do in fact have raised bed, it is best to achieve a level that when rotavated or dug (i.e. 'fluffed up) is a couple of inches below the sides, whatever they are made of, timber, slates etc.

It will naturally settle as mentioned earlier, you can cram crops a little more than the commercial growers because for home use you will pick the early crops of first early potatoes, summer brassica's salads and carrots etc to thin out the overcrowding allowing larger and more mature crops for later in the growing season. You see it is all really quite simple. And a matter of taste and preference. In wet weather with clay soil you can walk on the paths and not get all clagged up whilst weeding or planting out the raised beds, four feet wide being the optimum width.

They dont dry out too quick but may do if your on sandy or chalky soil, each to their own though...............

CoMpO

[Primrose]

I do think that raised beds have become a gardening fashion issue, rather like decking was, and apart from those of us who are growing older or who have bad backs and would welcome not having to bend down quite so far to plant and weed, I'm not convinced they produce any better or healthier vegetables. After 30 years of living in the same house and digging out compost bins every year our soil height everywhere has increased to the point where we've had to put a protective edging against the base of certain fences to stop the soil build-up rotting the wood and the level of our borders is now a few inches higher than our next door neighbour's.

[Compo]

I think as I said earlier, they offer a definition of where a bed starts and finishes with paths to stand and work on in wet weather. They look nice, even on an allotment, using 'allotment engineering' . the produces is just as good, and it offers you the opportunity to have definitive areas for rotating crops and manuring beds relevant to what crops are going into those beds at that time.

But as I said before, this does not suit all........it works for me though

CoMpO