Raised beds

[Joolly2]

I am just about to make some raised veg/fruit beds. I want them to be really sturdy and was thinking of using railway sleepers or something similar, however I have been told to be wary of treatments the wood may have had. Does anyone have any info about this or suggestions as to what I can use. I don't really want to have to line the beds if I can help it.

We are in the process of doing the same thing. We have bought five sleepers from a neighbour up the road who didn't want them anymore for £50 for the lot.

We simply dug out the old beds to get them weed free, then dug a trench the width of the sleeper about 2 inches deep, put the sleeper in place and then backfilled with soil.

One of them has tar seeping from it so I'm looking for a way to cover that without making it obvious but they are original sleepers from the old railway line in our village.

Ours will be flower beds and it's taken a huge amount of effort to clear the ground and get all the old roots out. We still have two more to put in and that's the bit that's the worst in terms of work!

You can get new sleepers that aren't treated. My parents have just done that with their raised beds.

Mycats - love your ladder idea in the photo. Tar seeping through would worry me a bit as I don't want it to leach into my veg. This won't be a problem for you as you are planting flowers. I think you got a bargain there.
Bluebell- thanks, that is what I was hoping for, do you know where they got them from?

I'm not sure if a local builders yard would sell and deliver them Joolly. But they weigh a ton! So hope you have help to move them into place!

That ladder was in our garden when we moved in, dumped behind the shed. It's old and not safe so instead of tipping it I've decorated it! The butler sink has water plants in and DP has found a very old set of Victorian looking taps which he is going to mount above it. We have a solar powered water pump on order so hopefully the water will come out of the taps and into the sink. That's the plan anyway!

This is our ladder at night.

Mycat - that is so pretty. I may just steal that idea for my garden. At the moment my garden is a mess. I have just redesigned it from scratch and have moved a huge greenhouse to a new position. It is going to be a long job, so much to do, but quite exciting.

Ours is a work in progress too. We have a load to do but we have two ponds (one fish pond, one wildlife pond) and our focus has been on them but I am sick of trying to battle up the garden through a jungle!

The lights were from Lidl, £5 each for the jars and the other lights were from there too but bought earlier in the year. All solar powered.

DP spotted a young grass snake in our wildlife pond earlier which is very exciting. We didn't see any last year but the year before we had two regularly visiting to sunbathe in our garden.

I don't have much luck with plants so I am aiming for water, lights and wildflowers. I have sweetpeas growing up the ladder now and honeysuckle over our archway.

I would love to grow some veg but so many bloody slugs in our garden and with so much wildlife and our cats I have to resort to the organic slug granules or going out with a torch and flicking off my plants with a stick! I'd end up with nothing but resentment and bitterness :o

Photos show the arch and the area we will need to clear. DP brought home a hippo skip today. I suspect it will be filled over the weekend.

Mycat- every day is a school day, I had to Google Hippo skip, now that may come in really useful, so thankyou for that. I moved my compost bin yesterday and disturbed 2 slow worms. I haven't seen a grass snake for years so I am a tiny bit envious of yours. Re slugs and snails, I read on another thread about pouring boiling water onto garlic and using the water when it cools to spray plants. It turns out slugs and snails are not fans of garlic. I may give it a go. Not sure I want my veg flavoured with it though.

Oh that's good to know, I must try the garlic water idea! Although at the moment my garden smells of honeysuckle which is heavenly. Garlic maybe not so much! Worth a try though, my poor Lobelia's are being decimated by the little sods.

We have loads of frogs and toads in our garden so I don't understand why we still have a billion slugs.

The grass snake has now moved to our fish pond where it spent a lot of time two summers ago. I am hoping to actually see the damn thing though, dp and dd have both seen it several times. I keep missing it and after spending ages sat in the garden yesterday evening trying to spot it, ended up covered in mosquito bites.

Time to get out the jungle formula I think.

Did you find somewhere to get your sleepers from? If they are too expensive you can buy thick lengths of timber instead. May be a bit cheaper too. We certainly couldn't afford to buy sleepers new, I think they are in the region of £40 each.

My cat- we have a hectic weekend ahead so I will not have time to think about the garden. I'm hoping my son will come with me next week to look around some timber merchants. Real sleepers will probably be out of the question if they are silly money. At the moment my garden is looking very sad, but I have a plan and once I get the big things done, (New seating areas, lawn reshaped, fruit trees planted etc) it should start to look more like a garden and less like derelict building site. I want to get as much hard escaping done this year as possible. Sorry don't know how to do paragraphs.

You need to do some before and after pictures.

Enjoy your weekend. We are still debating whether to do some garden stuff tomorrow or sack it off and go to the beach. We are at the beach on Sunday too.

I figure if it's too hot I'll get about 20 mins gardening done and then give up anyway.

We are just installing raised beds with sleepers - I got them from a local fencing company . Softwood tantalised sleepers 1.2m long for £8 each . They are not yet installed so no photos yet but I can’t wait for them to go in !