[Jeanieblue]

Whoops, it was Billins idea that took my fancy - too hard to dig at the moment, Small holder, but I will use your ideas to get rid of my hubby's beige jumpers !!!!    Jean

[Clodagh & Dick]

How about trying our ten -tub veggie plot idea described in'Growing healthy vegetables in Spain'. Having tried it out it is the way we will go if ever resticted to gardening from a chair. Having grown 18 veg in three 80 cm diameter 70 cm high tubs last summer one could grow a liitle of every thing. What worked well was two story growing. We grew a multitude of relatively shallow growing varieties but purposelsy grew sweet potatoes which grew below the root levels of everything else, the greenery drapped over the side of the tub to disguise it. When we had harvested the last of the tomatoes and peppers for Christmas we then dug out 12 very worthwhile sweet potatoes.
Incidently we save compost by lining the bottom of the tubs with upturned plastic flower pots and an offcut of a foam fish box.

[muntjac]

the idea behind raised beds is to have a deeper depth of good loam soil on top of basically crappy clay or poor soils its aids the roots of carrots etc being friable (loosely compacted ) it makes the tap root go down deeper for water and nourishment .if your soil is already great stuff you really do not need to do the deep bed thing .ok if ya got a medical problem with bending etc then high raised beds are great for you, it is not the be all and end all of gardening ,it (in my opinion ) is another fad in gardening and unfortunatly some folks with great land have just topped them up with more soil . if you have poor soil then it is easy enough to make it better  i answered a question onthis subject on another site and this is the portion of note this lady has deep clay soil when she turns it over the lumps come up so i gave her this advice

take a sharp spade and chop at them with it . make sure you keep your feet out of the way . as you chop it down throw a hand full sand on it just keep chopping it when you have broken it down to egg sized lumps is fine to start clay is waterproof and forms a pan in which any water sits on the plot . it is formed from very small particles which bond together to form hard lumps as u see . to break it down you need somthing to split the particles and allow water to go through ,.adding humus ( compost /manure ) add fibre to the soil which also breaks up these particles and acts to hold the soil together eventually becoming loam the best soil with sand it breaks open the particels and allows water to flow through . for a definituion of your soil you can pick up a lump in your hand and squeeze it tight . now release it .if it falls apart slowly in crumbles you have a loam with high fibre content , if you do it and it falls completly apart through your fingers you have a sandy loam . for clay it just stays in a lump , by adding components from the other two soil samples you achieve real rich loam . to maintain this you add more manure in my case a period of 3 years .. hope that helps

[peterhanlon]

I'm in year 2 of my allotment.  I put raised beds in from the start and I'm happy that I did. 

My reason for doing so differed slightly from most of the previous posters.  Being new, I found it difficult to know where to start with a massive rectangle of brown earth.  I found breaking the space up into beds, helped me mentally manage the plot better.  I could go to the plot with the intention of digging over 2 or 3 of the beds, and see progress in a way I couldn't when it was just raw earth.

I don't cover the paths with anything.  I strim the grass regularly, and eventually only the grass survives.  You do lose a significant amount of space this way, since the paths between beds need to be wider than they would otherwise, but I take that on the chin.

[mumofstig]

They didn't need to be raised to do that, though 

Lots of people divide their plots up into beds with grass paths in order to manage them properly