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Building another raised bed

Thursday, May 14, 2015 4:53
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(Before It's News)

Latest post from MARKSVEGPLOT – a blog about food and gardening in England”

The building of a second super-deep raised bed has been awaiting the end of the PSB season. Now I have pulled up the PSB plants, composted the leaves, chopped and bagged the tough stems for subsequent disposal – and built this:

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It is exactly the same as the first one I made, and the building was much easier this time because I knew what I had to do. Having said that, it was not as easy as it should have been because the timber was not cut as precisely as I expected. One of the long pieces was shorter than the other three by a good 2cm, which has meant that there is a gap where there shouldn’t be a gap. Anyway, this bed was only ever intended to be “rustic” and not a fine piece of carpentry, so it will serve its intended purpose.

The biggest challenge was shifting the soil sideways by 60cm, which is necessary if I am going to be able to fit in the other raised beds I have planned.

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This photo gives a good impression of the depth of the previous raised bed. It was only about as deep as the blade of my spade (approx. 20cm). This is the reason why I am making the new beds double-height.

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Shifting the soil has of course given me opportunity to turn it over and aerate it very thoroughly. I have also added a lot of composted stable manure, because the soil was very sandy and dry, with much less organic matter than desirable. After taking this series of photos I emptied the contents of one of my compost bins into the new raised bed, so it is now much fuller, and has plenty of organic matter in it!

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In the background of this next photo you can see my Asparagus bed, with loads of spears showing through.

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Here is a closer view:

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The only down side of all this is a huge pile of rubble: paving slabs, cement, hard core, half-rotted wooden boards….

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Looks like I’ll be making a couple of trips to the Council tip then…

To read more articles like this, on Gardening and Gastronomy, please visit * http://marksvegplot.blogspot.com/ *



Source: http://marksvegplot.blogspot.com/2015/05/building-another-raised-bed.html

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