I didn’t expect much from three of my four new raised beds this year.
I bought them back in February, and together with my partner Matt we assembled them and sited them on grass in the back garden. To fill them I ordered a bulk delivery of 50 bags of vegetable topsoil, which was duly delivered, and we also had numerous bags of homemade compost that we brought with us from our previous home when we moved.
I naively assumed that this would be more than enough to fill the new beds, but we very soon realized that it would not. Not even close.
I wanted one of the beds to have deep, loose soil to grow carrots and parsnips, so we completely filled one with a mixture of the topsoil and compost. To my astonishment after doing this we only had a few bags left - obviously a serious miscalculation!
I didn’t want to order another bulk delivery, so we decided to use what we could find around the garden. There were several log-piles among trees in the wilder parts of the garden, so we used a few logs from each in the bottom of the beds. Then we just added any suitable material we could find, including leaf litter, fallen twigs, pine needles and cones, wood chip, shredded cardboard, vegetation raked from the surface of the pond, grass cuttings, mole hill soil, etc. We finally got them filled, and finished each bed off with quite a thin layer of the topsoil mixed with compost.
Because of this my expectations for this year were low. I thought that these materials would need time to break down, and that plant roots would not grow well in this coarse, open, heterogeneous material. I resigned myself to having minimal success this year, and planned to add homemade compost to the beds later in the year so they would be much more productive next year.
But I could not have been more wrong!
The photo below was taken in early April, just after planting. The bed on the right at the front is the deep-filled one, sown with rows of carrot and parsnip seeds (yet to germinate when the photo was taken), together with some spinach seeds and a few herb plants. The one on the left at the front has a couple of rows of dwarf pea seedlings, with some posts to support them. I then, rather foolishly I now think, added some seed potatoes on either side of the peas, thinking it was very unlikely that they would grow.
The photo below shows the bed on the left now, just two months later. And just look at it - positively exploding with growth!
I have never grown potatoes before, and had no idea they would grow like this. Of course it could be all leaves and no spuds! And harvesting them (and the pea pods) is going to be a bit of challenge - but a fun challenge to have!
Similarly, the photo below shows one of the other two beds, which I planted with spinach and onion seeds together with a few herbs and companion flowers. This one is now a bit depleted because I have been harvesting the spinach twice a week for the last month, and also now have a whole drawer full of frozen spinach in the freezer. I have never had success with spinach before, but this grew so fast I just couldn’t keep up with harvesting it!
There is no doubt that gardening is a never-ending learning curve. And this year has been a particularly steep one for me, with a new garden that could not be more different to my previous one. Next year there are definitely things I will do differently, like plant/sow less densely and keep potatoes separate.
Sometimes, when you think you have done everything right, your plants inexplicably don’t thrive and you are disappointed. But other times, when your expectations are low, magic happens!
Excellent progress! I'm very impressed you've found the time to grow veggies successfully with all the other work you must have going on :-)
Very impressive! There seems to be a lot of growth in potatoes this year. I'm regular potato grower, and mine are very leafy. You'll probably find that you're harvesting peas before the tatties are ready, tho it depends on whether you've planted early, maincrop or late potatoes.
Very envious of your spinach. Is the bed in part shade? I grew amazing spinach on our Edinburgh allotment which was shaded for part of the day, but in my exposed, non-shaded and light soil garden in Moray it bolts before I can harvest any leave.