Raising the Vegetable Garden

Raised vegetable gardens, can be built in most gardens or courtyards even if all the courtyard is paved. Raised vegetable gardens allow for easier maintenance, less bending and if designed correctly a place to sit. They work well at heights of more than 300mm especially if they are placed over existing paving in a courtyard. Good controlled quality soil mixes can be used to start the growing medium before other organic fertilizers are added.

Materials: For this particular raised vegetable garden you will need timber sleepers (treated pine (CCA or ACQ) or Hardwood, galvanised nails or screws min 130mm long, gravel and sand.

Sleepers should be 200mm wide, 100mm deep and length can vary depending on how large you want to build your garden but typical sleeper lengths are usually 1.8m, 2.4m and 3.0m. In this 'how to' we will be designing a 400mm high timber sleeper vegetable garden. The approximate length will be 3m and the width will be 1.5m (one 3m sleeper cut in half).

Instructions: Building the raised garden

For this 'How To' we will be laying the sleepers flat as this provides a stable surface to kneel on when gardening and a flat seat when the wall is built to enjoy the fruits of your labour! The wall is also very simple to build and can be built on a level hard surface without the need of support posts. Depending on the size of vegetable garden you have decided to build, markup the position and size on the ground ready for the sleepers. If positioning the vegetable garden on a hard surface keep in mind that the water leaching out the bottom of the wall may continually stain the area. If placing the vegetable garden over soil lay the sleepers on 50 to 75mm bed of gravel to minimise moisture and potential rot attack in the bottom sleepers. Start placing the sleepers making sure that the corners are at right angles. The corners will overlap which will create strength and rigidity in the wall. This means that the internal dimensions of the vegetable garden should end up being 2800mm by 1300mm. Continue with the second layer and add two galvanised nails or screws in each corner to fix the second layer to the base layer.

The 3rd and 4th layers will be the same but make sure the fixing points alternate position so they do not end up in the same location. Once the vegetable garden is 4 sleepers in height its time to add the soil layers. 75mm layer of sand to the base will help filter the water that leaches out but also keep the bed well drained. A well draining topsoil(with little organics) should be added next leaving 150mm of room at the top for composts, coir - peat and other additives to be dug in, to improve the soil.

Now you will be able to enjoy an easy access and easy maintenance vegetable garden and hopefully the vegetables that will come from it!