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This system works and works well and has done for hundreds of years but it is inefficient and labor intensive. When it all starts again, (apart from overwintering crops), eats them and in the fall he lets his garden rest until the spring, harvests them, weeds them, he grows his crops in rows. He digs it in the spring using a gas powered tiller and incorporates plenty of well rotted farmyard manure as the food source for his plants. My dad is 80 and has a huge backyard which he gardens in the conventional way. Raised beds are becoming more and more popular throughout the world and when you look at the advantages they offer you can easily see why.

The digging I do is with a hand fork. I garden using raised beds with a more or less no dig system. This system has been around for hundreds of years and was very common in France in the early 1800's where long deep beds were developed to maximize crops. Truth be told there is nothing new in it. The new kid on the block so to speak is gardening in raised beds.

Construction

After that I built the bed using 1 inch by 6 inch timber but you can use any readily available size. I measured out where the bed was going and then dug the lawn up and added some well rotted horse manure. My beds are 6 inches deep (150mm) but these are built on top of where my lawn used to be. I have seen beds 3 foot deep and whilst these are a good idea if you do not want to bend it is too deep. I do not think empty wine bottles is a good idea as they can break and broken glass is a bad idea in any garden let alone a vegetable garden. I have seen them made out of cinder blocks and even empty wine bottles but the most common construction material is timber. Well you can build them out of almost anything and they will work.

Do not make them too long either as you will be tempted to walk across them and you should try to avoid walking on them. This is so that I can reach all the area from one side of the raised bed or the other side. Mine are different lengths and widths but never more than 4 feet wide. Well whatever fits in with your yard, as for size. The other problem with deeper beds is finding the soil to fill them. It does not need to be any deeper than this as most plants will not have roots that go this deep. If you are building your beds on concrete or another surface which plant roots cannot grow into then you will need a deeper bed and you should think about one that is 12 inches deep. There are some "safe" timber treatments but you need to check very carefully and make your mind up about this when buying your timber. Just make sure that you do not use a timber that has been treated with preservatives as these could leech out into the soil mix.

Soil mix

It is usually classed as an organic product. This is 100 percent sustainable and a byproduct of coconut production. Whilst I used old peat in my first raised bed I have not used this in my others but replaced it with coir which is the husk and fibers of the outside of a coconut. Wet and heavy soil does not do them any favors, you need to aim for a light and easily worked soil mix rather than just topsoil as you want to give your plants the best chance possible and cold. No more heavy digging just use hand tools from now on. When you get to this point you can put away the spade as you have finished with it. I knew I should have said no as this soil brought loads of weed seeds in. My dad also brought me some of his topsoil from his yard. I topped this off with a few bags of bought in topsoil which was from a major garden supply company and they claimed it had been sterilized to kill weed seeds. I put this in and mixed it up with a spade. Used peat from the greenhouse and homemade compost, what I used was a mix of well rotted horse manure. I could just have used bought in top soil but you never know where that has come from. When I built my first beds I did not really have anything to fill them with so I have to develop a soil mix to fill them with.

Growing

It also stops weeds growing and does not hurt my knees as it is soft. I have covered the paths with a membrane and then chipped bark so that it looks neat. Mine are set at 2 foot wide which allows me to kneel between the beds when working on them which is much better for my back than bending. The final point is what to do with the paths between the beds. You will also find that high density vegetable gardening also means that closer crops provide more shade and this cuts down on watering and also cuts down on weeds as well. Because you are growing in a food rich soil mix you will find that you can plant your crops at a much higher planting density than normal and you get a lot more out of a raised bed system than conventional vegetable growing.

How productive it is but more important how much more tasty the vegetable always are when you grow your own, try it and you will be surprised at how easy it is. I recommend growing your own vegetables with a raised bed system.