Rasied garden beds - usable depth

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by erehwon, Feb 19, 2007.

  1. erehwon

    erehwon New Member

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    Hi - am new to your forum and need some assistance.

    I live in Perth and have little experience withe permaculture. The available space at me home is limited, but I do have an area north facing - which is paved around the outside of a rectangle of blue chip metal. All this has been architectuall designed. My thoughts are to place the corrugated steel raised garden beds on top of the area of covered by the blue chip metal (see https://www.gardenersdirect.com.au) - which come in depths of 400 and 800mm. In order to get the garden bed level - I won't have access to the full depth - this is where I get stuck - should I go for the 400 or 800 mm variety. Or maybe a better way of expressing this is what is the minimum depth for a garden bed that will grow herbs and vegetables?

    Thanks in advance for any assistance ....... Paul
     
  2. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    g'day paul,

    the minmum depth 6"s or therabouts, i usually work toward 10"s often end up with 12"s at times depends on where i am siting the bed.

    if on uneven ground the depth may vary depending on how much height is needed at the down side end to get to top of the bed level.

    len
     
  3. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    Paul,

    400mm would be fine, anything over 300mm is a bonus.

    floot
     
  4. crowtrapper

    crowtrapper Junior Member

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    It really depends why you want raised beds, as to how high they should be. We recently built our first raised beds for veggies, with tremendous success. The reason they are successful is we both have bad backs and at a height of 750mm the beds save us from almost all stooping/squatting.

    The structure is sheets of corrugated iron, corrugations run along the beds (hence the 750mm height), supported about every metre with a steel post. The beds are 1200mm wide so we can reach across to the middle easily.

    Because of the physical ease of handling the gardening tasks, we have looked after our veggies better than ever in the past. Works REALLY well!
     
  5. IntensiveGardener

    IntensiveGardener Junior Member

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    minimum bed depth

    I find that the deeper i get my beds the better. Good vegies can be grown on 300mm but for really good yeilds deeper is better. Some of my beds are 700mm now :)
    By increasing the depth you increase the growing area. I plant vegies at 3/4 the normal spacing when its this deep. More vegies per area means more vegies per litre of water. etc
    A soil prepared 2 foot deep can double the yeild of most vegies and will increase the yeild of potatoes by up to 10 times!
    cheers, I.G
     
  6. Jackie K

    Jackie K Junior Member

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    Hi Paul,
    Welcome. I was just thinking. Something to keep in mind is that if the sides are exposed to the direct sun in the heat of the day in summer it can become hot enough to cook the roots. I lost a lot of potted plants this year from that cause even though they were protected. Just the ambient air temp. Not really an issue in suburbia where backyards tend to be protected, just thought I'd mention it. I had a worm farm that I used to convert doggie logs; hadn't got it functioning 100% before 3 days of 46 degrees. Even though it was in a protected shady spot and I had the sides shaded with double layer of 80% shade cloth, the poor worms cooked. Think I will just dig a hole and bury the doggie logs in future. The worm farm in the shade house was untroubled.
    Can you place the garden beds across the slope so you don't lose so much of the depth?
    Thanks for the site link for the raised beds. Was wondering where to get them when I saw them on "that's your bloomin' lot" :lol: :lol: Can be useful for other applications as well as gardens.
    Catch you later
    Jackie K
     

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