Plot 12A Wood for raised beds 14-01-2012

how high are you allowed to raise beds on an allotment? is there a limit, or is it, as high as you need and can manage to build?

should think as high as you need them ,waist high would be ideal ,i can not see anyone objecting to that,

nods, that was my second prob with gettng an allotment - the first was how to get there lugging all the stuff I'd need, tools and sacks and sacks of compost and stuff!

I have no idea, nobody on our allotments field has raised beds higher than about 30cm/1ft. I shan't have enough wood to go higher than that either. Ideally, as Joebell says, waist high would be better! But to do that you'd need a great deal of wood!

Fortunately for me Gerry has a trailer he attaches to his car & brings down any heavy stuff on that. Just today we collected a "ton" of "Soil conditioner" to take down to the allotments! I've already used about 8 bags to cover just the very last bed I'd cleared & manured a few weeks ago.

He brings down sacks of horse manure as well. He may come down from time to time with a bag or two of compost in the boot of his car.

shee, that's a load of "conditoiner"! I'm not really serious about gettng an alloment: apart from the travel and transportation issues, I don't know that I'd be able to work one properly - even my tablecloth garden is giving me a pain wiht all the lifting and shifting, and, even if there were'nt a mile-long queue, wouldn't be fair of me to take up something that I'd not be able to do justice to - even if waist-high beds were allowed.

*s* I did think, when I got my mobility scooter, of getting a trailer on the back of it!

I wrote "ton" just to say a lot of the stuff, not a literal ton in weight! Nevertheless there was a lot of it. Even so it goes nowhere on an allotment. I covered a bed about 4ft wide by about 15ft long & must have used about 8 bags. It difficult to say how much because the bags were also of differing sizes. The depth of the material is mostly about an inch!

I told Gerry about people having to paid £2 for 20 kg bag of the stuff & he agreed with me that for an allotment it would work out too expensive! That 1 bed I covered could have cost me around £20 if I'd had to buy it! I've got about 5 beds covered like that & of similar sizes - I've probably saved £100! Then there's the pathways between them which I've filled with a couple of inches of the stuff & they take about 4 bags, that's another £8 per path x four paths = £32 That now works out at about £132 - just on my half allotment! Plus I've still got enough bags of the stuff to make a few more paths/cover another bed!

Works out at a lot of money! Then there the wood for the raised beds! I'd hate to figure that out! As it was it came from crates brought over from the USA.

My allotment is working out to be a "black hole" for money! Fortunately for me that's all money I've saved/not had to spend! Count in the "man hours" = time spent getting hold of the wood/Soil conditioner plus preparing it & it works out to an awful lot of money!

Gerry took some short, thick pieces of wood home with him to cut up for stakes. I don't have a power saw to cut them up & cutting them up with a handsaw, especially on the allotment, would be a nigh on impossible job! When he has done them I can start to put my "jigsaw" together.

wow, Balcony! sounds like I'd have to win the lottery to be able to afford even part of an allotment!

I didn't take "ton" literally - *s* that would bave been a heck of a lot of stuff!

I've seen compost sold in "bulk" on eBay - just went there to check and found a few items, dunno how much you need but it'd probably be a lot cheaper than buying in bags - if you've got somewhere to store it until needed! *s* that's probably take up the other half of your allotment.

One of them talks about "ton" for £35, will deliver, and on pallets, so that'd be a bonus! if the link'd be any use, be glad to pass it on

ps also just thought to check "wooden pallets" - found lots, one at £1 each, but they need to be picked up from Norfolk - and another at 99p from Gillingham. Of coure, they're the "starter bids" but you might be able to find something that's close enough to you to make it economical.

or even pallet wood planks, already broken down and presumably de-nailed!

sigh, what stops me getting some of the last is what usually stops me "pickup in person" only

Thank you so much for that info!

An allotment costs you whatever you are willing to spend on it! After the rent whatever you spend on it is according to your possibilities, as I've been unemployed for almost 3 years, I can't afford to spent more than a few £s for seeds/fertilizer/compost. I couldn't afford to buy anything else.

Like you the "pickup in person" always gets me as well. I have no form of transport other than public & I don't think the bus driver/train employees would look very kindly on me fighting to get on with an armful of planks/bags of manure!

maybe a bunch of allotment people could club together to buy stuff, that'd be too much for each to buy or even need individually? sort of co-op - each buying a share in a large purchase that, being large, would work out proportionately cheaper - and one of 'em surely has transport, or access to same!

but then someone's got to organise it and keep it going; and i doubt that's an easy task. and everybody's probably got their own preferred brands or types of this or that ... assuming that they'd all ant the same thing at the same time - and there'd be bound to be probs, sooner or later, who had what and how much ... probably not such a good idea after all