Raised beds

The first raised bed - surrounded by Raspberries/Blackberries/herbs/skirret/pear trees

One of my jobs today was putting together the first of at least two raised beds in the garden, so that we can grow some annual veg. The bed itself was relatively cheap - four 3.6m lengths of decking at approx. £5 each and 1.5 fence posts at £10 each gives a total of £35 for a 2.6m x 1m bed. This works out at £13.46 / m2. Since I've seen garden centres selling flat pack ones about 1 m2 for £30 or £40, I don't think that's bad.

Of course, I also had to fill it. I turned over the turf underneath the bed and loosed up the soil a bit, which filled out the bottom a bit since when you dig over the soil always expands. I also chucked in soil from a number of empty containers I had standing around. But still, the bed was mostly empty and I didn't have any more soil available.

A bed that size with a depth of 24cm has a volume of 0.24 x 2.6 x 1 = 0.624 m3. Since there are 1000 litres in one m3, this means I needed around 600 litres of soil. Not having any good quality soil free, I bought 600 litres of top soil, compost and manure from the garden centre for about £60 and mixed it together.

So the question now is, what's the best annual veg to plant in my new 2.6 m2 raised bed? I do plan to build at least one more, but we don't have much more free cash right now so it might be another month before I can.