- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
A question I'm getting quite a lot these days
is what is a perfect or the ideal size of a raised bed?
And so in this video
I'm gonna show you what I think is the ideal size,
or at least the ideal range of sizes
that you may want to consider
if you're wanting to either extend the garden,
or if you're at the start of creating
your first-ever vegetable garden.
This garden is all about growing in raised beds
with solid sides like this.
Now raised beds without sides are a totally different story.
So if you want to find out more about that
you might want to look at things like market garden beds.
When it comes to raised bed sizes
the most important thing for me
is for it to be as ergonomical as possible to work around.
I don't want to be regretting particular sizes.
And the first thing to explore
is talking about the maximum and minimum width
I believe a raised bed should be.
As the years have progressed,
the garden has changed and evolved.
Originally all the beds were around six foot wide.
Now, it's totally doable.
What you need is to have something like a plank
in order to walk on it and reach the middle.
But as time has progressed
this garden has downsized in terms of the size of beds
that we're making.
Up until last year, where I'm standing right now
used to be three wider, longer beds,
but these have been replaced with six smaller beds,
and there's a reason why I've done this.
When you have a bed like this, which is six foot wide
or 1.8 meters, it's quite hard to deal with
because if you're trying to focus and you're gardening
down like this, and you're trying to reach over,
you're tempted to put your foot down and work like that.
And then you're kind of arcing your back a bit.
It isn't the best.
But when you have a bed that's more narrow
it's really easy to reach the middle
without having to stretch or step on it.
And to get to the other side, you simply walk around,
and you've got the whole thing covered.
As time progresses,
we're gradually replacing the older, wider beds
with more narrow beds.
And we found that four foot is, at the moment,
our go-to width.
I find four-foot to be the perfect size
because it allows me to get maximum coverage
without having to reach over too much.
And because of that, it means,
in terms of pathway-to-growing area ratio, that increases.
You can obviously create raised beds that aren't as wide.
This here is around 45 centimeters, so 1.5foot.
I wouldn't go any smaller than that
because then you'll kind of get into window box territory.
And the thing with those is that
because they have much less of a volume of soil,
they tend to dry out more.
So my absolute minimum is 45 centimeters,
or one and a half feet.
Something that's just as important as width is length,
because if something is too long
you might be tempted to jump over it
rather than go right around it.
Or, if something is too short,
you may actually be losing vital growing space
to having an excessive amount of pathway.
When I'm creating these beds the minimum length
will be four foot, or 1.2 meters, which means that
this is the smallest kind of raised bed I make.
It's four foot by four foot.
It's a really nice, square area.
So if you wanna grow perhaps a few perennial herbs,
for example, or dedicate it to salads or extras,
it works great.
As well if you have a smaller garden,
but you do want some raised beds.
This is just such a nice, usable size to work with
and grow quite a lot of food on as well.
Over the years, I found that the perfect length for me
is 10 feet, so that's three meters.
Any longer and honestly, I look at the end of the bed
and I'm like, "Do I really have to walk
"all the way around there, or all the way around there?
"I could just hop over."
Maybe that's not the safest thing to do.
So I found the sweet spot in terms of length
and considering not having too much of the garden
used up as paths is 10 foot long.
The next question is how deep should raised beds be?
So you're going to love the answer.
The answer is it depends.
But the good thing is it only depends on two things,
and it's all about what are the raised beds on top of.
It might surprise you to know
that this garden doesn't really have top soil.
There used to be more barns, just like the one behind
where this garden was with a concrete, solid base.
And that means that because of having a lack of top soil,
the height of the raised beds needs to be a little bigger.
So if you're building raised beds on hard ground
you want to aim for your bed to be
at least 30 centimeters high
in order for you to grow the widest variety as possible.
You can always make your beds taller later on,
but aim for a standard 30 centimeters.
If your garden has quite a deep top soil layer,
you might actually want to consider
having shorter based beds, say 20 centimeters.
I personally wouldn't go lower than this
because then you're starting to lose some
of the unique benefits of raised beds with sides,
one of them being raised above the ground,
meaning you don't have to constantly
be stretching down too far.
And if you have a bad back,
that might be something you want to consider.
When it comes to raised beds under cover,
it's a different story.
In terms of height, you want at least 30 centimeters.
For length, I'm not too worried.
I know that undercover growing space is so precious.
I'm okay to walk right around
this long section of raised bed.
This raised bed in the middle is four foot wide
so I can get maximum coverage on both sides,
but when you're under cover
you usually are growing up against the side.
So at an absolute maximum,
I want the beds to be around three foot wide.
These here are around two and a half foot.
So I can still get quite a good reach.
But if it was four foot, it would mean
that it'd be really awkward because I can't go
around the other side cause there's no pathway
behind this bed.
So that's roughly the ideal raised bed size
I like to aim for.
A foot deep, four foot wide, and 10 foot long.
Now, if you've created a load of raised beds,
or you're trying to extend your garden, and you're worried
about how to make a planting plan
in order to get the most from it,
then you can check out a course I've made.
It's an online course called
"The Productive Planting Plan," which is designed
for you to have abundance of food year round.
And you can get 20% off using the coupon code 'PLAN20'.
And there's more info down below.
This course is going to show you how to create
a planting plan for your garden
that not only provides an abundance of food,
but also loads of satisfaction and enjoyment
throughout the growing season.
You're going to learn how to create
a bespoke planting plan that is tailored to your climate
and also to your needs.
And a monthly planting plan is simply an upgraded version
of an annual planting plan with the sole goal
of you being able to get more from your growing space.