Sweet Chestnut Raised beds

Well it's taken me a year, but I finally have some raised beds in that I can use. Well nearly... I still need to fill three of them. 

Trying To Tick Jobs Off

 So I've been trying to do little jobs and often, it's a way I can move forward while keeping everything else running in the background. 

One of the jobs I've trying to get done (since this time last year) is the sweet chestnut raised beds. I really hate having this timber stacked up and not being used. 

The idea was to have them at the bottom of the veg garden where it lies wet all winter. I'm hoping this will provide a bit of drainage and make this area a bit more manageable. 

So far I only have a few fixed in place and I' haven't filled them yet, but already it's given that area of the garden a bit of structure. I can't wait to get them planted up. I'm very tempted to have one or two fo them for strawberries and try to get better at growing that fruit! 

Let's hope I can get the rest in before the growing season really kicks off. 

Do you like growing in raised beds? Or do the negatives outweigh the positives?

Garden Experiment - Single Clove Garlic

With my less than ideal storage conditions much of my garlic is starting to sprout, a timber shed just isn't the right place for it. I wish I preserved some of it last summer when it was at it's finest but I'll just have to make plans for that when I harvest it this year and not save so much to use "off the bulb". 

Having this sprouting garlic has given me an idea though and I've decided to have a little experiment with growing some single cloved garlic, I've read people sometimes call it lazy garlic as there is less to peel! 

One of my raised beds for my experiments

 The theory being that garlic needs a month of cold weather to separate into lots or cloves inside the bulb. By planting now when the worst of the cold weather is over it should grow nicely but as one large clove, kind of like elephant garlic (but not obviously) but with the stronger flavour of normal garlic.

 I divided four bulbs of garlic up and separated it up into large cloves and small ones. 

 The large cloves I then planted at normal spacings for garlic (about 6-8 inches) and fill the bed up with them. The small ones I planted really close together with the intention of pulling these green and using them almost like chives. 

I'm not sure how well this will work, if at all, so please don;t copy me, but I thought it might be an interesting use of some garlic that was well past it's best! I'll report on these later in the year.

Anyone else grown garlic with the intention of growing just a single clove? It'll be interesting to compare it to my other garlic that was put in during the autumn and the elephant garlic as well. 

Wood Chip & Hot Beds

"Do you want a this load of wood chip?"

A phone call on Sunday morning from my dad. My brother had a big job on last week and had produced a huge amount of chip that needed a home. I didn't realise quite the size of the load until he turned up with it. I should know that they never do anything by halves! 

A "small" load of wood chip

Some ruts left to be sorted out

Some serious heat in those chips at the moment - it did give me an idea...

Levelling a patch for a little experiment

Frames added

When dad dropped off the wood chip, and after I got over the ruts he left in the field, I was quite intrigued by the heat being given off from the stack. It got me thinking about Victorian hotbeds and growing veg out of season.

As a little experiment I've decided to level off a patch of chip about 3ft deep and add a couple of frames to it. I then put a few cans of water over it and some of last years comfrey tea to speed up the decomposition. I'll leave it a few days now and see if it holds it's heat. If it does I'll add some soil and compost to the frame and grow some salad in the one and potatoes in the other. I've got some old perspex I can to the top to keep the heat in at night and I can remove it in the mornings. 

This should make an interesting experiment. I've also got plenty of wood chip to make some paths and to use as a mulch around trees. I've watched the video on the "Back To Eden" system of gardening but I'd never have a supply of chips regularly enough to do that, although it might be interesting to try on a small scale in the garden somewhere.

Some New Raised Beds

Over the Christmas break I started to try to tidy up the bottom of the veg garden.

The messy bottom end of the veg garden.

It's located below my fruit tree nursery and it sits wet for a lot of the year. My plan is to dig a small drain by hand to hopefully move some of the water on and then to raise the growing area. I grew some of my artichokes down here last year in my cheap raised beds and they grew really well so I thought I'd up the scale this time. Lots more pallet collars needed - luckily I get them for free!

The very wet area at the bottom. standing water

Raised beds added. Chicken shown for scale...

This should tidy up the bottom and provide some new growing areas.

So I've now got nine 4ft by 3ft raised beds 16 inches high at the bottom of the garden. I'm planing on using them for plants that don't quite work with my usual rotation so lots of unusal veg like Oca, ground apples and the like, it also lets me tailor the conditions to them a little more as well. I might dedicate one bed to some more flowers and one to things like leeks that we never seem to have enough of, there might be more raised beds going in yet!

I've lined the bottom of the bases with cardboard, now all I've got to do is fill them! It took ten barrowfuls of soil to fill one (I've got a big pile of spare top soil) so I've got a bit more work to do yet, I also need to find some muck to to add in as well.

Hopefully I'll get started on my large raised bed for asparagus in the next couple of weeks as well, but I've also got lots of work on as well so I'm already getting short of time!
Anyone else been increasing their growing area this winter?

Raised Bed Materials

Next year I'm going to increase my growing area in the veg garden again. The bottom area is very wet and holds quite a bit of water. The plan is to install lots of cheap (free) raised beds using pallet collars stacked two high. 

These worked brilliantly this year for growing my Jerusalem artichokes in, so the back fence will be lined with them giving me around ten 4ft x 3ft raised beds to house some of my more "unusual" crops and as a way of increasing a few of our staples like leeks. 

When I picked this spot for the garden I didn't realise how wet it got down the bottom, it was the obvious place though and once I get round to putting a drain below it it should be much better, but until then it's raised beds for the last 30ft of veg garden (the rest is fine as it all slopes that way).

These pallet collars are no good for one of my winter projects though, as I have a crop planned that will out live them by several times over - Asparagus. I've been looking at all the types of raised beds I could build and I have my usual problem of wanting to have my cake and eat it to. 

I want it to cost very little and I want it to last for ages! Is that too much to ask? It's going to be 20ft long by 4ft wide and about 18 inches high, so hopefully enough to give us a good spring feeding in a few years time.

My old garden raised beds made with half round rails

Half round rails - I did this at our last garden but I know they won;t last that long, in this wet spot I'd give them 5 years tops!

Some rather brilliantly made compost bins at my friends fathers garden using railway sleepers and galvanised steels concreted in to hold them in place

Sleepers and metal posts - sleepers are expensive, old ones have lots of creosote that will leak into the ground and new ones won't last!

Friends fathers garden - Slabs used on edge to hold back soil

Concrete slabs - difficult to install and will be difficult to get hight, would probably need a small footing as well, making it very permanent.

Friends fathers garden - Blocks laid to form a large raised area to the garden

Blocks - A good solution except for the need for footings and if they were to lie in the wet all winter heavy frosts might destroy them (although I can get frost proof blocks).

At the moment I'm thinking of building the raised beds out of corrugated galvanised sheeting with a wooden top and frame to hold it in place. The frame will be easy to replace when it rots and the sheeting should last as long as the asparagus crops for.

What would you use for a long lasting raised bed?

My Old Veg Garden - Raised Beds

Here are some pictures of the garden from our first house. The soil was what my dad would call "boys soil" so easy to work and grew everything really well, a light sandy loam. We decided that raised beds would landscape the garden nicely and make it easy to use. Mum drew a design that I liked and I built it in the evenings after work over a few weeks during March and April 2008.

The soon to be veg garden as we bought it in 2007

Clearing the area to build my raised beds

Goofy picture of me building them. I can't believe how much I've aged in 6 years!

First two beds built and planted up!

The finished veg garden. 

The right hand side of the garden had a greenhouse and strawberry beds

Growing during the first year

How it looked when we sold the house and left. below the veg garden was the chicken pen and I had another greenhouse by then as well.

It was a great little veg garden and we produced loads from it, in the summer we hardly had to buy any veg at all. I really liked growing in beds and I think it's one of the reasons that I've divided my current garden up into beds now. It makes it easier to plan and easier to break the weeding up into achievable amounts. 

Anyone else love their first veg garden?

A Very Late Planting Of Jerusalem Artichokes

When we had the Allotment we had a good patch of Jerusalem artichokes and enjoyed them roasted with a meal. when we moved here I planted some I took with us but the plot I chose for them was too wet so they just rotted in the ground. 

 Although it's a little late to be planting them, last weekend I managed to get the ones I managed to get hold of in the ground. I used some pallet collars from my dads work as cheap raised beds and filled them with soil we dug out from the greenhouse. 

Two raised beds with five artichokes to a bed. One bed was one collar high and the other two collars high to see which will do best.

Hopefully by having them in raised beds will mean that if I want to change their location it won't be too much of a problem, as I know they can be a little invasive.

Anyone else grow Jerusalem artichokes? How do you grow yours and do you feed them with; manure to start with or a liquid feed when they're growing?