Raised beds

After 10 years of meaning to do this, I’ve finally got around to making raised beds on the allotment. I’m making a virtue out of the fact that the allotment has been pretty much untouched since last spring, because last year work kind of took over in a way that was completely ridiculous, even by my own ridiculous standards. 14-hour days were normal  and weekends were mostly taken up either working or crashed out recovering from the week. So, that means there is nothing growing on the plot for the first time in a few years – a perfect time to put in raised beds.

I’m hoping the raised beds will:

• help galvanise me to get back into allotmenting after a fallow year – I need to do allotmenting, it’s an important part of the stuff I do to keep myself well and happy
• make it easier to work with the clay soil (because it won’t get compacted from me treading on it and will dry out a bit quicker in the spring)
• make it easier to manage crop rotations
• put a stop to couch grass invading my beds from every side – the paths in between the beds will be covered with woodchip (that gets delivered regularly to the allotment and is free)
• make it more manageable overall
• be pleasingly symmetrical and lovely to look at
• make me happy about finally getting around to it after all these years

We started this project a couple of weeks ago, and it turns out making raised beds is harder work than I thought it would be. I don’t know why I didn’t anticipate this, but there you are. It’s not the first time I’ve pressed ahead with something on the DIY front without quite thinking through what’s likely to be involved and how hard it might be, and it won’t be the last.

You have to::

• get the wood and cut it to size (I ordered mine online and am keeping it in the shed until I can get it all up to the plot)
• treat it, ideally with something that won’t poison you if it leeches into the soil like this from Harrod Horticultural: Eco Wood Treatment
• put the short ends (120cm lengths of decking board and 40cm long 2×2 corner posts) together at home in the shed because it’s easier to do this at home than trying to do it on the plot
• get all the wood to the allotment, a few boards at a time with them poking out the sunroof of the car
• carry it from the street to the plot, which is a decent walk from the gate though thankfully mostly flat
• dig 4 holes, the right depth and in the right places, for the corner posts
• dig along where the planks are going so there’s no earth in the way of them going in to the right depth
• assemble the bed by adding the 360cm lengths of decking board to the ready-made ends
• plonk it in the holes and then level it all so it’s horizontal
• add another board at the front of each bed to create a stepped terrace down the slope

It took 2 of us about 4 hours all told today to get 3 done. It was hard going; we are both tired from a long week at work, it was windy and we were hungry. But they do look lovely, just as I was hoping they would, and it was really rewarding to stand back and look at what we’d done. I felt like we’d really earned our lovely lunch at our local veggie cafe.

So. Overall, it’s worth the effort, I think. Now I *can’t wait* to get planting.