Raised beds - are they worth it?

[Poppins2016]

I'm moving house soon and will have a shiny new 100 ft garden to play with. It's a blank canvas (mostly lawn) as our vendors don't seem to enjoy gardening...

I'm aiming for cottage garden style and would like a pretty area dedicated to vegetables. I know this goes against true 'cottage garden' rules... I like fennel, artichokes, herbs, etc. in a cottagey border, however I personally find it hard to properly grow vegetables (like spinach or carrots) in a flower bed!

I'm lusting after some cottage style raised beds like these: waterwillows.com/product/ch1-small-woven-willow-raised-beds/
I'll probably go for four beds and would like something a bit larger than the product I've linked to, so that plants have enough room to grow and aren't crammed in...

I suppose I'm wondering whether people find raised beds practical or whether they're just gardening 'eye candy'?

I like the woven look (although they're not cheap) so I might try wooden instead. Any advice on materials?

How long before they rot? How do you maintain them (if you do)?

Etc... All advice appreciated!

P.s. My post wasn't clear...

I'm thinking raised beds for veg and fruit (strawberries) only. Cottagey borders will take over the rest of the garden... Just got a bit carried away describing my plans.

I grow my veg in raised beds and pots, and I love them! The beds are made of new railway sleepers and it’s a very efficient way of getting exactly the soil mix and care that they need to produce masses.
There are a number of useful books on how to manage them, but it’s a lot easier than growing them in the ground.

Eye candy.

Unless there is a reason for them, i avoid them these days. They just become a trip hazard. That style will rot quite quickly as the stems are quite thin so after 18 months they will just crumble.

I have brick edges to my lawn path, and the rest just at the same level and grow all sorts in them, veg amongst the flowers. Fruit trees espaliered along the fence.

If I am doing veg plots, i just put weed fabric down over the lawn, use something to edge it, and put woodchip down. then make holes in the weed fabric, and plant the veg out in the hole, water in and mulch back up to the sides of the veg. Then after a year or two, remove the weed fabric and rake the now nicely rotting woodchip back over the whole bed and there you have a nice veg bed. Carrots, i always grow in pots anyway - they get mullered by carrot fly if you put them in the ground.

What's your soil like? We have about 6ft of very heavy clay under a small amount of top soil, so we have put raised beds in purely to be able to grow something.

So that’s two very different opinions!
I’ve got 3, about 1x1.5m, at the bottom of my garden. I grow things we eat a lot of, the herbs are mostly scattered around the rest of the garden. Woven willow doesn’t last long. My strawberries are in a long, raised trug as the slugs are a problem otherwise, on the edge of a patio rather than in a raised bed.

I have raised beds but they are much taller and wooden. They’re about 80 cm high I think. They’re great and so easy and you can perch on the side when weeding and planting. One has hoops that you can attach a net and polythene cover to so you have a mini greenhouse.

I got them from Harrod Horticulture. They have a huge selection of types.

www.harrodhorticultural.com/superior-wooden-raised-beds-pid7995.html

We used pop up beds last year, and planter pots. They worked out very well. This year we've been allocated an allotment 🙄

I'm attempting to grow fruit and vegetables in three huge apple crates. I had to put spare top soil somewhere after garden work and so mixed this with compost
Worth a try and only cost about £100 for all three, will feed back how I got on at the ned of the summer!
PS love the look of those beds btw but cant imagine them lasting long

Thanks all, very useful food for thought.

I think I'll steer clear of the willow (seemed a bit too good to be true, can't have looks and practicality, can we? ) but might try out a wooden version... Hmm.

If money is a consuderation, I went with cheaper plastic ones for three years until I was sure I’d got the time and inclination to grow veg. Then I used birthdays and Christmas gifts to upgrade to wooden.

I think it’s easier to grow far better veg in raised beds. I have four very large sturdy wooden ones. Because they are off the ground seeds/young plants don’t have to battle stones, debris. Carrots parsnips etc grow very big as they have space to easily grow down. Very very easy to weed. Not as back breaking as they higher, less bending for you. Would thoroughly recommend.

I use them because my allotment is clay and prone to water logging. And I got free sleepers.

If I had nor,al soil and no couch grass I’d go for just beds and use a no dig method.

Cardboard on to turf, layer up with organic matter and plant through the cardboard.

Whichever method can look great.

They're only easy to weed if you can reach to the middle of them, otherwise you have to tramp over the top of them.

Yes - don't make them too wide.

Ours are about a metre wide, which is fine. As our vegetable garden is on a slope down to the pond they range from 30cm deep at one end to about 70cm at the other. The 'deep end' is great for root vegetables - carrots, parsnips and salsify - all have done well.

With heavy clay soil, the raised beds make it a lot easier to get vegetables started earlier and I am sure increase our yields.

We moved to a large empty garden 22 months ago. We made our raised beds using scaffold boards. We designed the beds in a U shape, so that we could walk down th middle for easy access.
Around the edges we planted, fennel, parsley and marigolds. It all seems to work well.

TERF I was thinking of doing the tarp+mulch bed creation and planting tomatoes through them. Would you forsee any problems with tomatoes? It is an excellent way to start beds - I did it with strawberries for two years and I ended up with this lovely, weed free crumbly soil from a patch overgrown with couch grass and bindweed and all sorts. I just planted a rhubarb crown in it now (it's a slope so I've put all fruit on it, no annuals so I don't need to faff with it again). I feel like Monty Don! First time I've ever been able to plant anything in this garden without finding some lurking horror!

All of my veg garden is raised beds
but none of these namby pamby product things ....

8' x 4' with setting out pegs at the corners and 6 x 1 scaffold boards nailed to them
so the beds are about 6 inches tall

it means that my veg beds do not get walked on in the growing season
it makes the soil warm up and drain better
it makes weed and pest control easier
and it means I can bring beds into use one at a time

all sowing is in the Geoff Hamilton 'block' method as it works best

I was thinking of doing the tarp+mulch bed creation and planting tomatoes through them. Would you forsee any problems with tomatoes?

no - they will be fine...as long as you plant them out after the last frost date and they are sufficiently hardened off.

I grow bush tomatoes outdoors, they tend to be fuss free.

I will be putting rotted manure down with weed fabric on top, and bark on top of that - in my new greenhouse, which will help to control the weeds and keep the moisture in. And make holes in the weed fabric and plant through for the first year at least.

Thanks!

I got a bit excited and sewed seeds of 4 different tomato plants... all cordon type. I've got 30 on the go right now - erk!

Just placemarking, as I want to do veg this year.
Are there any veg that thrive in North facing gardens? I have one south-facing fence, but I wanted to put an apple tree in there... so my only option is the other border, and that's north-facing.
If it helps, we eat leeks, carrots, peppers (are these even possible in Britain?), spinach, potatoes the most. I'd love to have rhubarb, but it would take up too much room- garden is small city type.

When I researched raised beds before building ours advice was everything will rot eventually so go cheap!

We used 2x2 for the corners and then scaffold board for the sides. They've held up better than I expected to be honest. We even managed to move and rearrange them last year.

This is when they first went in 6 years ago.

I grow all my veg in simple raised beds, I just put cardboard down on the existing grass and piled compost inside. I find them fairly easy to maintain and I like the organisation of having a salad bed, one for potatoes, another for carrots etc.

We repurposed some decking boards in 2015 to make our raised beds. Photo attached is from almost exactly a year ago. Entire area was lawn which we dug up.

Haba you'd probably have better success growing peppers indoors. We grow them fine in an unheated greenhouse in Scotland. They might manage outdoors on south coast of England.

Peppers aubergines tomatoes and basil are all in the polytunnel here on the south coast
and this spring I'm wondering if we'll get any veg at all

supermarket food will be expensive this summer !