I’ve long wanted to start a vegetable garden and this dream is slowly coming true as I’ve spent the last few weekends digging and building vegetable beds. In this post, I’ll explain how to create planting beds using the ‘deep bed’ method which is a great alternative to a raised bed.
THE PLAN
The overall plan for our back garden is to have a couple of seating areas and a small grassy patch to lounge about in the sun on. The rest of it will be covered in vegetable beds. I am planning to grow as much of our own food as possible using our quite small garden but unfortunately at the moment most of it is just grass. Now that I am ready to start turning this grass into planting areas, I decided that I want to use the ‘deep bed’ method to do so.
Digging deep beds is hard work as they have to be dug much deeper than a normal planting area. This is because the idea behind deep beds is that they are soft and fluffy way down into the soil so that plant roots can go down easily and don’t have to spread so wide. The beds have to be worked without being stepped on to make sure that the soil really does stay so fluffy. All this allows the plants to be closer together than if they were being planted in rows. They are cheaper to create than raised beds as you don’t have to fill them with loads of compost – you just dig over the existing soil in your garden.
This first area of the garden that I’ve dug over is quite wide so I decided to split it into 3 deep beds to make sure that I have plenty of space to walk in between them and won’t accidentally walk on any of them.
MATERIALS & TOOLS REQUIRED
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Materials
- Manure (optional)
Tools
- Shovel
- Rake
STEP 1: PREPARE THE AREA
Prepare the area to be dug over by pulling out all the weeds. If there is any turf then dig this off too. You can compost turf by stacking clumps of it grass side down until it rots down. I didn’t have that much turf so I collected the clumps and scattered them all over my patch to be dug into the soil to rot down.
Once the area is clean enough to start digging, mentally split it into squares. The digging will be done one square at a time – I’m starting digging from right to left.
STEP 2: DIGGING THE FIRST SQUARE
Start from one end. Use your shovel to scoop a shovelful of dirt out of the first square and pop this dirt next to where you scooped it from. For me, I’m shovelling soil from square 1 and putting it on to square 6. Then dig a second shovelful out of the hole and put the dirt on top of the first pile of dirt. You should now have quite a deep hole in your first square – you’re aiming for a hole at least 45cm deep.
STEP 3: DIGGING THE SECOND SQUARE
Now move on to the square next to it, you can work in rows or columns. I decided to work in columns. Get a shovelful of dirt from this square and pop it into the first hole you dug. Then get a second shovelful and do the same. You should now have filled in the first square and have a deep hole in your second. Leave the dirt from your first hole where it is at the moment and move on to the third square.
STEP 4: DIGGING THE FIRST ROW/ COLUMN
Keep digging the squares in your row/ column until you get to the last square in this row/ column. At that point, you should have a row/ column of fluffy soil apart from your last square which should be an empty hole. Fill this hole with the dirt you left on the side after you dug the first hole which will complete the row/ column.
You can now move on to the next row/ column and follow the same steps. Keep digging until the whole patch of soil is dug over.
STEP 5: FINISHING THE BED
Once it’s all dug over, if you want to, you can add a border around the bed to separate the area. I am adding a border because it helps my dogs spot the no-go areas – without the border, they’d pee and stomp all over the lovely fluffy dirt. This isn’t necessary though.
I also piled a load of manure on top of my bed at this stage and forked it in to rot down ready for planting in a few weeks. This also isn’t necessary and will really depend on the type of soil you have and what it is you’re looking to plant there.
You may notice that all this digging has made it look like you have more soil now than before giving the area a sort of raised bed look. This is normal and will settle a bit after some time.
THE RESULT
When adding my borders, I split the area into 3 deep beds in total. They are just big enough for me to reach from each side without ever having to step on them. I also added a gravel path in between them which should hopefully slow down weed growth and make it a bit better for me to walk on.
The beds should be more productive than this space would have been if I hadn’t dug it so deeply so I’m looking forward to finally planting up some veggies!
