I remember starting my very first vegetable garden. It was a really exciting time but just a little bit overwhelming! “Where do I begin? What should I plant? Will I even get a harvest?” Well look, whether you’re adding to your garden this growing season or you’re a complete novice and starting your very first garden, I hope this article should provide you with a little bit of inspiration to get started. Today we’re going to install a new vegetable bed together. We’re going to get it planted and I’ll be sharing some tips to get you through those first nail-biting months. Don’t worry, your new veggie garden is going to look fantastic! So today I’m going to add another one of these beds here. This is about three feet or slightly over; three feet by four feet (or 100 by 120 centimeters). It’s a pallet collar bed so it’s instant and it comes ready-made like this. And it fits in with what I’ve already got here. It gives those nice pleasing lines of symmetry and just adds to the order of it all. Now why raised beds? Why bother with them? Let me show you why:
So the whole point of a raised bed is that it raises the surface area above the surrounding ground level, and what that does is it means it drains through a lot quicker so the growing medium inside dries out quicker. And after a long wet winter that’s really valuable because drier soil in the spring tends to warm up a lot quicker, giving you a head start on sowing in the colder ground down here. So to get our raised bed in place you will need a raised bed or materials to make one with, you’ll need some cardboard, you’ll need a growing medium to fill up your bed, and of course a wheelbarrow to transport it, some tools, and of course our plants and seeds. A pallet collar bed, which can be obtained for a very affordable price, is the bed that we are putting in today. Yet, assuming you need an alternate size bed, maybe one that is a piece longer for instance, it’s extremely simple to make your own from blunder. Use natural, untreated wood because you don’t want any harmful chemicals to seep into the soil since you’ll be growing edibles in the bed. If you have any desire to make your own bed like this, utilization wood that is basically an inch or ideally two inches (that is five centimeters) thick. A really sturdy, long-lasting bed will result from this. To ensure a properly secured finish, simply drill pilot holes near the end of each plank and into the plank next to it. Then, using long screws, screw the planks together. Cross the planks as shown; one over the other in every way. So the bed is adding on to the end of this row here. It does get a fair amount of sunshine but it also has a fair amount of dappled shade too. That’s fine. Ideally, you want to put beds where they get as much sunshine as possible, at least six hours, eight hours ideally. But never mind if you do have a quite a shady spot, you can at least grow some leafy crops and salads, many of which we’ll be planting today in fact. I’m on a bit of a slope here so I’m going to dig this bed into the slope so it’s nice and level so the water doesn’t run off. A bit of a slope is fine but too much and it gets a bit problematic. You can either build up the soil on the underside to lift it up level or dig it in like I’m about to now.
So I marked out the position of the bed with canes pushed into the corners just so I know where I’m digging and then I can start work. This is actually quite a quick project. I reckon that digging in takes about 15 minutes and then putting in the growing medium and planting, I reckon you can get this done within one hour, I honestly do! It’s a lovely project. You can even get it done in your lunch break maybe. Very satisfying! That’s it dug out I think to the best of my ability. I’m just gonna check the levels now. If you don’t have a spirit level, then a little tip – you can actually download for free spirit level apps to your phone and use that instead!
So I’ve dug it in as best I can but I’m a little bit out of breath so I’m going for a combination. I’m just shoring up the front of it here with some material to raise this side up so it’s nice and level, which it is now, and then I’ll use some of this excavated material back around the edges to firm the bed in.
To help suppress the weeds I’m going to put a layer of cardboard down. This acts as a barrier. It makes it much harder for the weeds to get through. To be honest, with the grass here you could just dump the growing medium on top having given it a really close crop but I just like to be on the safe side and use cardboard. When you’re using cardboard (I think I’ve mentioned this before) do make sure it’s plain cardboard not glossy cardboard. It’s fine if it’s got a bit of printing and writing on it because those are usually made from organic plant-based dyes but you don’t want that glossy stuff because that’s just bits of plastic really and that will come off. Get a really good overlap so that the weeds don’t get a chance to poke through. And just make sure it’s quite damp. It’s going to be raining a lot later on this week so I don’t think I’ll need to wet this down or anything but if you are in a dry climate, give it a good soak to thoroughly wet it through. Now this will take about two months or so to rot down and by that time all of this grass at least will have died off and if you’ve got perennial weeds, they’ll be severely weakened. And then they’ve got to get through that growing medium on top so it really does give you a competitive edge. Some people use that sort of weed suppressing membrane like Mypex, made from sort of plastics and so on. I’m not keen on that for obvious reasons, trying to use less plastic. And why not use waste materials you’ve got to hand anyhow? Just make sure you remove any staples and bits of tape so it’s just clean clean stuff. The beauty of starting a raised bed is there’s no digging involved; it’s the plug-and-play way to get growing! You simply pop your bed in, fill it with your growing medium, plant it, and you’re away! Let’s fill ours…
Now I’m not starting a fire here! I’m just filling my bed, or starting to fill it with what I’ve got around. Filling your bed can get quite expensive, especially if you’re using bought-in all-purpose potting mix; it’s pricey stuff! So start filling the bed with what you’ve got to hand. I’ve got these bits of prunings here. They’ve been lying around for about a year so they’re quite dry. I’m going to break them up by snapping them down and spread them all out and those will rot down. They’ll act a bit like slow-release fertilizer, slowly breaking down and adding their nutrients into the rest of the growing medium.
You’ve got a few options when it comes to filling your bed with the rest of your growing medium: you could use well-rotted manure (that works well), green waste compost, topsoil (special topsoil you buy in), or indeed your own garden compost. I’ve used in the past green waste compost, which is compost made from collected garden waste that the council collects. The trouble is I found it contains lots of bits of plastic and glass and other debris. It’s fine; I’ve used it to fill most of these beds and I just fish these bits out as I come across them, but this time I decided to opt for mushroom compost. Mushroom compost, as the name implies, is compost that was used to grow mushrooms. But it’s still got loads of good life in it and it’s really great stuff, so I’ve bought it in by the bulk bag and let’s get it into our beds! When you’re filling any bed, you want to really get the compost in there right into the corners and edges and don’t be afraid to really pack it in. You can actually stand in it and press it in. You want it nice and firm so the roots have plenty to go on. And that way you know once you’ve squashed it down you might need to go back and get another load. I started my first vegetable garden when I was about 10 years old and it was quite a small plot and I dug it all over with a little hand trowel! It took absolutely ages! It took a couple of weeks I think, but it was thoroughly enjoyable! But if I’d have known about this no dig, no-till technique then it would have saved so much effort I tell you! This is just so quick, so easy, and so instantaneous, with instant results! What I love about it is that you’re starting with a really clean surface, so there’s going to be no weed seeds in here, it’s just going to give you such an easier start!
So because I said the mushroom compost here is a bit lumpy and I’ll be sowing as well as planting into this, I want to finish with just a thin layer of slightly finer material. So I’m going to open this bag of all-purpose potting mix and just add that over. If you have just one bed to fill, then you might find it more economical to fill the bottom of the bed with just your garden soil and top up with a couple of bags like this, rather than getting in a whole load of it. But if you’re doing more than say two beds, I think it’s definitely worth getting a bulk bag of compost in because it works out a lot cheaper per unit volume. There we are, it’s looking beautiful! Never mind growing your food in it, you could eat your food off this it’s so clean and lovely! And now the most exciting part: planting of course! I’ve got some plants that I started off in these plug trays here, which are ready to plant out. I sowed them in the greenhouse. If you want, you can buy plug plants; they’re readily available. But let’s plant these out! So I’m going to add a good mix of things here and I’ve got some seedlings in my garden here I can bring over as well. I’ve got some kale, some salad leaves, some onions, and some herbs to go in as well. And here we are, we’ve planted up our bed! We did it together! I think you’ll agree it looks rather good. I’m going to give it a good watering in now to settle the plants in and they’ll grow away nicely. And what I’m going to do is put some of this slug barrier around it. This is a wool matting that you lay down and it’s actually sheep’s wool in here and the slugs and snails, they really don’t like crawling over it, so it’s a really good, organic way of keeping them off your crops. And once it gets wet it can be quite solid and dense, it makes a nice solid mulch. Of course, you can use bark chippings or anything else as well. If you’ve got perennials like asparagus or strawberries you might want to use bark chippings, which last longer, but for annual crops, this is just fine. I’m really pleased with it, and I can’t wait to see these plants come on. If you’re thinking of starting your very first vegetable garden this season, go for it! You will absolutely love it! And once you’ve installed your bed, just check every few days for any pest damage or for drying out of the soil, especially in dry weather, and within a few weeks you should be able to see some really good growth on your plants! Happy gardening!
