Raising Garden Beds: Part 1, Positioning and Filling
Posted by robin on 04 Jun 2008 at 12:29 pm | Tagged as: gardening, raised beds
Last year we tore up a part of our ornamental garden, laid down pea straw and compost and created a large vege patch as part of our main garden. We ate well over summer, lettuce and tomatoes every night, as well as silver beet, mizuna, beetroot and pak choi, from this garden and a patch of recovered driveway. Other veges we tried to grow around fruit trees failed and we soon realised that a set of raised beds would be needed to produce enough food to allow us to grow all our veges.
Macrocarpa Beds
Kiwi Backyards in Waipukurau has 2.7m x 1.2m macrocarpa raised beds which are ideal for our purpose, Macrocarpa is very hardy and doesn’t need to be treated to stop it from rotting away next to soil. The beds are reasonably expensive at almost $200 each, but when I factor in the time I don’t have to make them myself it seems like a pretty good deal, especially when they are delivered to the backyard. We bought three and had one round the side of the house, which we’ll be moving.
Laying them out
We decided to position the beds in a row of four, with enough space to let the wheelbarrow fit between them. The row is along the back fence where the chickens live, the final plan will involve some contraption to fence the chickens into individual beds to give them some variety, fertilise the bed with their nitrogen rich poo and clear out the scraps at the end of a season.
The hardest work is actually here, preparing the ground means paving areas which aren’t already concreted driveway. A couple of years ago a builder gave us a pile of bricks which he had after pulling down an old lime-mortared chimney. The bricks add a bit of red in the garden which we like the look of and make for free paving.
The spot near the back fence also catches full sun in summer and is just far away enough from the house to get plenty of winter sun too. Positioning the beds for sunlight means a better harvest and being closer to the kitchen makes for an easy reminder of what to cook.
Filling them up
A bit of searching on the web and reading some books has taught us that we need to layer our beds with brown and green, or carbon and nitrogen materials. Autumn is a great time to do this at our place as our weeping elm drops loads of leaves for a good first layer of brown. Green can be manure, lucerne hay, or grass clippings. We don’t have any lucerne, but Precious and Buster the miniature horses from round the corner were happy to donate some of their hard work. It’s amazing how much poo a little horse can make.
Brown Materials (Carbon Rich)
- Leaves
- Straw
- Paper
Green Materials (Nitrogen Rich)
- Horse Manure
- Grass Clippings
- Comfrey leaves
- Lucerne
- Worm Castings
After placing down the first brown layer of leaves (and raking up some leaves from the parents house round the corner) and sprinkling the horse poo, we mowed the lawn to bulk out the green layer with some grass clippings. Next, a layer of our home made compost, some comfrey and another layer of leaves.
The first two beds are now almost there we’ll need to finish it off with a top layer of good soil, but first we need to wait for Buster and Precious to do their thing before we can empty the trailer of the rest of the leaves and fill up the last two.
That is awesome Robin, wish you guys were a wee bit closer, you could sell some of your left over veggies at our Farmers’ Market (http://stjohnsfarmersmarket.com) that we’re helping to organize… I think mailing them to Newfoundland would defeat the purpose
Thanks Colin! I’d love to if you were still in NZ. We think it’s great that you’re doing that by the way. Love a good farmer’s market.
Come get some cow poo from our place ! We have heaps to share. Has worked fine in our veges. Got plenty of grass to mow for clippings if you want some too.
Great blog. Now we can keep an eye on what a real gardener is doing.
Wow that garden looks fantastic, and what great info! Really something to aspire to.
Hey I’m so glad to see you guys have got a blog - your vege gardens look heaps flasher than ours! Look forward to progress shots.
Little one looks so cute sitting in the leaves. She’s a real Autumn girl! Love the photos - and that crazy purple broccoli looks divine. So pretty you might not want to eat it! Put it in a vase instead…..
Hi Robin, nice article.
I understand the convenience of the Macrocarpa, and the practicality of the non treated timber. The cost though and the limited life though…? These Organiponico raised beds (http://yesterdaysfuture.net/blog/?p=75) are made of local quarry rock (gap 40) and 10% cement.
I know all the arguments for not using cement and in general agree, but the long term nature of these has to factor into the calculations.
Anyway they cost me $80 for a 4.5m bed 1.4m wide (internal), and it took two of us three hours to pour the mix.
They also flourished in the hottest dryest summer on record (Waiheke Island), and despite having a small roof area and two adults and three kids in the house, we didnt have to buy water (yes, we are on rainwater).
Hi James, thanks for the nice comment! I had seen your beds online once before coincidentally, they are really nice looking as well as functional. I think you have a great result there. How do you support your cloche frame? We will be doing something similar in a couple of weeks but it would be good to get some tips
Thanks for all the good info. I’m new to this even tho i’m 64, and want to get started with a raised garden. It looks as tho you set yours up on top of concrete, is that so? If I can do that, it would save getting in people and the mess of concrete cutting. Please advise. Thankyou, Tony
I wish I had a sweet little cherub like that in my garden!
Oh, this must be the beginning. I found you on Blotanical and came over to read awhile. I started at the top (newest post) and read all the way down to here. Your blog and posts are fascinating. I will enjoy following your green garden style. You are fortunate to live where you are permitted to have chickens and where there are cooperating horses nearby. Keep up the good work.
Tony, you sure can, in fact it can even work better on concrete because you don’t get weeds coming through around the edges. Just make sure they are deep enough to give the plants room for their roots, and put a nice thick layer of newspaper at the bottom to hold the moisture.