Growing Fruit & Veg In A Raised Bed

Growing Fruit & Veg In A Raised Bed

A raised bed is a quick and easy way to add growing space to your garden, even if you are short of room. It can be especially helpful at reducing the aches and pains produced by bending or kneeling to weed or pick produce.

Raised beds have many advantages over traditional beds – you can easily control the mix of soil to suit what you are growing and improve drainage. Raising the bed by just 20cm can greatly improve its drainage.

Because you don’t have to step onto a raised bed to weed or pick produce, it greatly reduces soil compaction meaning you have to do less digging! This also means you can grow more plants in less space as you can get round them much more easily.

Maintenance is also greatly reduced as you can easily reach weeds and pests – it is also easy to cover the bed with a weed suppressing membrane. Watering is made easier as you can irrigate where it is needed and less is wasted through evaporation.

It’s important to plan your crops carefully to get the most from a raised bed garden. Get some paper and pencils and draw a sketch of your layout noting pathways and areas of strong sun and shade. Write a list of the plants you want to include and fill these in on your plan.

Once you’ve got your raised beds it’s important to get a good blend of soil. You can use about 25% soil from your garden, them blend it with good quality compost (if you have your own composter, this will work fine) and add in some sand to help with drainage.

Make sure you take steps to discourage pests from your raised beds. Bird netting will help protect your crops and a slug trap will take care of slugs and snails.