Raised Beds vs. In-Ground Beds

The bandicoot:

This is part two of the bandicoot story: I abandoned my in-ground beds over a bandicoot and his (her?) love of digging up nice curl grubs. I grew all my garden life just in the ground and this is still the cheapest method. It’s very effective otherwise it wouldn’t be used by most commercial gardeners. It is strange, that for most Australians raised beds are the go-to method, we’re living in a dry and hot country. Obviously, the biggest drawback of raised beds: they need not more water and I can say now they do need a LOT more water!

Why I don't use Wicking Beds:

Wicking beds seem to be much more suitable if you want to conserve water, but the looks! No matter how one tries to disguise these plastic crates, they are still ugly plastic crates disintegrating within a couple of years. During that time, your surrounding soil didn’t improve a single bit, having a water reservoir beneath the growing medium does not allow for any interaction with the soil bacteria, critters and fungi, which modern science finally acknowledged to be more important than all the fertilizers garden centers can sell you. If that is the only way you can grow, go for it! Wicking beds also allow driveways easily to be converted into growing space.

Our raised beds:

Back to my raised beds: So far, the bandicoot didn’t come back. They seem to be less sportive and fingers crossed that it stays like that. My beds are half a roofing sheet high, that is about knee high and getting older it is nice to bend down less. However, crops also grow taller, climbing beans, tomatoes etc. sometimes a milk crate is not high enough to harvest.

Because of the open bottom there is enough contact with the soil so that garden as a whole system is improving. Any brews I put on the beds will also benefit the surrounding area.

I am also aware that there is much more temperature fluctuation in the soil. I also use a very narrow spacing of 55 cm and have to figure out what to do with the pathways. Mulch seems to harbour sandflies, but un-mulched there are a lot of weeds growing. So far I rip them out and throw them on the beds for mulch. I might do some stepping stones and groundcovers – I’ll report on this later. I certainly won’t grow lawn in between the beds, otherwise I’ll have a constant struggle with grass growing in my beds, I’m not a sheep farmer after all.

As said, my beds are simply old roofing sheets cut lengthwise and screwed together. The corners leave room for improvement unless you like repairing clothes. Our long beds do have a wire in the middle to prevent bulging. It is way cheaper than commercial raised beds, that are usually too low and too small to be really useful. Just keep the width to 90 cm max so that you can easily reach the middle. It’s not very difficult and if he wouldn’t have done it I would have built them myself rather than going to Bunnings, I would just use the wonky cut side on the lower edge so that’s not visible. But of course, he did cut straight, what would we do without lovely OCD men!

Since I already had a garden, I used the soil that was there. If you don’t have lovely garden soil, what I would do is to layer whatever soil you’ve got with other things like seaweed, coffee grounds, soaked ripped cardboard, some grass clippings, a little bit of manure here and there, compost, food scraps and the like. In case there is clay, I would throw a handful of gypsum in here and there. That’s what I would do, being frugal. I want the produce grown in my garden to be cheaper than what I pay at Coles, way cheaper, not including the labour of course.

All in all I am happy with the beds and quite honestly, I enjoy not to bend down all that much anymore, I’m an Oma and you’ll get 100 points if you can translate that.

You can grow more than you think!

One more thing before I shut up: Yes, it is possible to grow lots and lots of vegetables in a small space. The only commercial fertilizer I use is chicken manure and gypsum in our clay-pit garden. I produce mulch on-site. It does require work and some understanding of how nature works. The tricky part IMO is spring, when you want to get rid of all the carrots and cabbages and fill your garden with tomatoes and cucumbers. Because of the limited space and the love of tomatoes. Next year I really want to stagger the planting better and it will be easier because we’re not building the beds at the same time. Our food forest is still growing and trees do take time to produce. We do fill the spaces up with annual crops, which doesn’t make the garden look like the heaven of tidiness, but it does fill the plate.