New to growing veggies in raised beds. Any advice very welcome!

[fluffypillow]

My DH is about to build me 3 raised beds, all 6' x4'.

Then all I will have to do is grow something and I haven't got a clue where to start .

I don't want to grow lots of different things, maybe just keep it simple.

We love runner beans, so would like to use one bed for these. Can anyone suggest the best seed for yield and taste? There are so many to choose from!

In another bed I would like to grow sweetcorn, but how many plants could I grow in that space? Would it be worth it? Not sure how much corn I could potentially produce. Again, if anyone could also suggest a variety that would be really helpful.

In the last bed I would like to grow strawberries, as my children get through so many in the summer, and it would be great to grow (and eat!) our own.
Any advice for variety, and tips for growing would be great

I plan to start all the seeds off inside, not sure if this is necessary though?

Really looking forward to getting started, but first (well, after DH has bulit them!) we need to find some good quality topsoil. I'm assuming we will need alot , so if anyone could point us in the right direction for good (cheap!) suppliers, that would be great.

Thanks for reading, grateful to anyone who can share tips and advice

Consider what soil you're going to put in the beds. We bought good grade topsoil and mushroom compost. Big mistake. Plants grew very slowly, and this is in Oz with plenty of sun and rain. We're going for rotted cow manure instead of mushroom next season.

Keep a record of what you plant and where so you can rotate crops.

Check every day/other day to remove dead leaves and pick out weeds; this prevents it from becoming a Herculean labour later on.

How near is your veggie patch to the kitchen? If it isn't then plant herbs as fillers in flower beds.

Go on the interweb and you'll be able to find a site that tells you what to plant and when. I've found one for Oz, so there must be one the UK.
Someone will be along soon to speak more Britishly.

A question for whoever that is: do you use mulch, and if so, what kind?

Hi OP, I was reading about building raised beds last night...apparently you need to build them from untreated wood? PLUS, I was wondering if we buy untreated wood how do we prevent the wood from rotting in the ground? Can't help you with anything else I'm afraid, I'm all new to this too!

For the runners the RHS suggest White Apollo and St George. The RHS have an awards to reliable varieties, they revamped then recently , look for something that says RHS AGM.

Sweetcorn, I'd do roughly a row of 6 plants x 4 plants with a foot spacing. Not quite sure if that's right but it works for me ! Google 'super sweet sweetcorn variety'

Strawberries come in early, mid and late varieties plus ever bearers that crop smaller amounts but over a longer period as not sensitive to day length. Ken Muir or Blackmoor have a good selection, get a mixture. Mara de Bois are lovely, yiuncan't buy them in the shops as fruit doesn't store. You'll never need to buy them again. First year cut off the runners they produce, second year peg them into little pots thn when rooted properly cut from main plant and you have baby plants. After 3rd year plants burn out so you replenish with your runners. Strawberries are very hardy and will survive what winter throws at you.

Beans and sweetcorn both tender. If you start inside don't do it too early as you'll have a jungle by the time ready to go out. I plant direct these days as much less hassle. Generally I just chuck two seeds to each hole and remove weaker seedling if they both make it.

Not sure of top soil supplier, sorry. Agree with Echt on well rotted manure if you can find a good supply, or chuck chicken manure pellets in, currently probably no offer in garden centre. Early in the season whikst main crops getting under way, try planting radishes and lettuces for a quick crop as they mature fast.

Happy planting !

Thank you all for the great tips.
echt
Looks like I will need to get some manure. Veggie patch is really close to kitchen, and near to where our dog plays, so I'm hoping this will keep the birds and cats away from it! Will be growing herbs outside in a big old tin bath tub I have. It worked well last year.

lolalotta
We are using scaffolding planks, not sure if they have been treated or not. I saw it on the gardeners world site. It was a cheaper option.

wynkenblynkenandnod
Thanks for the advice re; runners, strawberries and sweetcorn. I was going to start planting soon, but may be more sensible to wait a bit, or plant direct. (that sounds much easier!)

I didn't realise I could grow different strawberry plants to bare fruit all summer- fantastic! I was just going to buy one type of plant, so that advice is really helpful. I will go and have a look now .

Thanks again everyone

wynkenblynkenandnod

Can I just ask you, when you say that you can grow the runners in pots in the second year for the following year.........what do you do with them in the winter? Do you keep them in pots in a green house, or plant them in the ground? Does the frost not kill them?

The Black moor site looks good, they have some great strawberry plants on there.

We've only done one year. I'd ask around to see if any friends have some strawberry runners the could give you. We also grew Mara de Bois and they are delicious and fruit over a long period. We would definitely plant them over the other varieties we have. We also have alpine strawberries which make tiny, delicious strawberries and are good for keeping small children occupied. We bought our Mara de Bois on the internet and you get really pathetic looking things to plant, but it does work. We netted our strawberries to stop birds eating them.

Where plants allow it you can plant successionally so that you have a longer season and less of a glut.

Our beds are varying heights, so in the deeper ones we had potatoes, carrots and parsnips with the parsnips being the most successful - we dug some up on Christmas day for dinner and they were great.

We bought our soil from a supplier that delivers cubic metre bags of it. Ours was mostly 50/50 topsoil and manure, but we also did some beds with just topsoil.

We grew runner beans up poles last year - we had 2 hexagonal 6ft wigwams. You need a climbing variety for this. We didn't have much luck with planting them straight in the soil and found that letting them germinate in a glass on a windowsill with some damp tissue and covered with cling film was really effective. We then potted them in small pots and grew them into small plants before planting one at the base of each pole. I think we should have planted them successionally as we got quite a glut, same with baby gem lettuce.

If anyone has any suggestions of veg for a more shady raised bed then I would really appreciate them.

Thank you breatheslowly

Another vote for 'Mara de Bois' strawberries! I really want to try them now The alpine variety sound good too. I have a toddler, and strawberries are her favourite fruit, so they sound ideal. So many strawberries you buy in the shops now are tasteless(and expensive), so I would love to have our own supply growing in the garden.

The parsnips sound lovely. How wonderful to be able to dig some up fresh for christmas dinner!

It sounds like you had a successful first year, I hope we will have some good results too!

I am thinking that we will have to dig soil up from another part of the garden for the beds, as it is so expensive here(about £200-£300 for what we need!) The only problem is that we have bindweed in parts of the garden, and I am worried about it getting into the beds.

Will get some manure to mix in to the soil, as it seems to be what most people are recommending.

I am going to put poles into one bed for the runner beans. Want to grow as many as poss, so we can freeze for the winter.

Great tips, thank you

How much soil do you need? Ours was about £65 for a cubic meter so nowhere near as much as bags from the garden centre.

Not sure exactly. We'll have 3 6' x 4' raised beds. They will each be 2 scaffolding planks deep! Want to fill each one to the top for depth.

Reading that back, maybe that is too deep! Not sure if I should put down a protective layer to stop weeds coming through before topsoil, or just put topsoil down, and use less, then the plants will have access to the soil that is there already?

Not sure if this makes sense Can you tell I'm a newbie 'gardener'

You have 3 180cm x 120cm x 40cm (maybe a little deeper). So you would be loooking at about 2.5 cubic metres of soil, so about £160 if you did what we did.

Ours are 20cm, 40cm and 60cm deep. The parsnips we grew were about 40cm long and you could see a change in colour when they went down into the soil below the bed. We grew potatoes in a 40cm one too. We had strawberries and garlic in the 20cm deep one and they all seemed ok in that. We haven't had any problems with weeds growing up through the soil yet, even in the shallow one. If you put something down between the new and old soil will your bed still drain?

I'm not convinced that you should take any advice from me as we are only 1 year ahead of you.

Strawberries are really hardy, you can leave them outside. You could also let some root in the raised bed if you prefer, just find something to peg the runner down onto the soil. They kind of do it naturally really. My strawberry patch always ends up a mess. Good tip on asking around people you know to see if they have spare.

I suspect if you have bindweed anywhere near by, you'll end up with bindweed everywhere, no matter what you do.

Rocket gardens currently have 15% off plants, and are a fantastic company. You can order now for delivery later on. pm me for the discount code.

breatheslowly
We had a look at the garden today, moved a couple of old sheds, and the soil underneath looks pretty good, so we will move some out from there. I think we will just make the beds 1 scaffolding plank deep, and use the soil that is already there too. I won't bother with a protective layer, and just weed as they come through to keep on top of it. I don't want drainage problems with all the rain we get here! Told DH today that we HAVE to grow parsnips now as I want to dig my own up for Christmas dinner ! I'm the only one who likes them though, so won't need too many!
When did you plant your parsnips? Is there anything I need to know?
Thanks again for all your advice.

wynkenblynkenandnod
I didn't realise strawberry plants were so hardy. I don't know anyone who grows strawberries, but I like the sound of the Mara de bois plants, and will definitely get some of those. They sell them in packs of 12 though, not sure if I could fit all of them in a single bed. Might have to use another container too, maybe.
Thanks for coming back to answer my question. All your advice is really valuable to me.

muppeeeto
Yes bindweed is a right pain. It's in all the surrounding gardens, so there is no getting rid of it. I will just have to keep on top of the weeding, so it doesn't strangle everything.
I'll go and have a look at the Rocket gardens site now, Thank you

My first lot of strawberries were from Rocket Gardens, they are great.

I think you might need to dig over the soil under your bed to allow the depth that the parsnips need. We planted seed straight into the ground and thinned them, just following the instructions on the packet. We netted ours with very fine net as they are susceptible to carrot fly apparently. But we have only done it one year, so aren't experts.

breatheslowly

You've done one year more than me, so I am very grateful for the advice!

I will have to make sure I dig over the exsisiting soil before I put the topsoil from else where down then. Thank you, I would have probably just thrown it on top. I hadn't realised that parsnips could grow that big until you said yours were 40cm.......wow!

Good tip about the netting too, I'm guessing you do that with your carrots too?

We had another look at the space we have in the area we are putting the beds, and we might be able to fit 5 in, so I've been ordering seeds tonight!

I've bought runner beans, parsnips, carrots, swede, sweetcorn, and purple sprouting broccoli (not sure how difficult that will be to grow, as it takes so long, but I LOVE it!!!) I will order the strawberry runners when the beds are ready.

Starting to use a compost bin in a few days too. Just need to find a good position first, then we're away!

I'm excited now

I don't know about purple sprouting broccoli, but we netted our fast growing broccoli and a single butterfly got in. The closer you looked at the broccoli the more caterpillars you found. They came in a range of sizes down to about 5mm and I hate to think how many we ate even after picking off the ones we could see. Maybe purple sprouting is ok because it grows through winter.

You don't even think of things like that before you start, do you? I mean, who would have thought 1 butterfly could cause that much of a problem!

I'm not sure if the purple sprouting will be difficult to grow, but I thought I would try as I buy such alot of it when it's in season, it would probably be well worth it.......fingers crossed!

Can I suggest making space for a courgette plant? One or two are enough to keep you very well supplied with them. They're easy to grow, you jsut need to keep them fed and watered and keep picking the courgettes as soon as a usable size.

Thanks for the advice bumperella. I hadn't thought of courgettes! I think I will pick up some seeds. I was thinking at first that I would just keep it simple, and grow a small amount of things, but now I think it may be better to experiment with lots of different veg, and see what happens! I love courgettes, and didn't realise I would only need 1 or 2 plants, so will def give that a go, thanks

Anyone know if you can keep leftover seeds for the next year if the packet is open? and if so, what should I keep them in?

I keep leftover seed, and it always seems to come up next year with no problem. It needs to be kept cool, dry, and dark.
I seloptape the packet closed, then store in an old biscuit tin. Bung sillica gel packets in it with the seed packets to absorb any moisture (I ask people to pass them on to me - those wee tea-bag things you get inside new handbags).
You're going to end up with an enormous veg patch at this rate :-)!

Thanks bumperella great tip about silica gel packets.

I think my veg patch will be too huge I might regret it when I am overrun with weeds, and have slugs attacking everything

The final plan is :

Bed 1. 12 x strawberry plants

Bed 2. 12 x sweetcorn plants

Bed 3. 2 x courgette plants and purple sprouting (not sure how many?)

Bed 4. rows of carrots, swede and parsnip

Bed 5. 12 canes with runner bean plant growing up each.

I think the finished beds will be about 3' x 6' ( thought they would have been a bit bigger, but space doesn't allow).

Do these amounts sound about right?

Not sure how much space purple sprouting needs?