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Some advantages of moveable boards
Polythene and netting protection
Keeping beneficial animals away from crops
A fleece-bed. Who needs a greenhouse or polytunnel?
The practicalities of making moveable boards
An alternative system - 'frames'
Gardeners and allotment holders often surround their beds with boards made of wood or plastic. The boards clearly and neatly separate the cultivated areas from the paths, and by only walking on the paths, the soil in the cultivated area stays uncompacted. There are advantages in using boards but not all of them have been explored, I think. Unless reclaimed timber is used, boards cost money - this deters many gardeners from using them. Once it's realized that boards have many uses, that they can save a great deal of money, overall, then the arguments for using them are very strong. I only give some of the uses for boards here, as I don't include any of my recent work in this site. This recent work includes six other uses for boards.
Some advantages of moveable boards
Polythene cloche and netting protection
For example, if polythene or netting (not free of charge, but very cheap) is stretched between the boards, we can make the whole of a bed into a low cloche, or a protected area: a cloche-bed or a netting-bed. (The fleece-bed is covered in a later section.) This idea - which isn't a new one - isn't implemented very often, perhaps because the disadvantages are obvious. Although it's easy to staple polythene or netting to the fixed framework of the four boards, what do we do if we want to weed or harvest? Remove the staples? The difficulties disappear if we use boards which are supported by stakes - one or two stakes for each board - so that the boards can be moved very quickly. By moving a board towards the centre of the bed, we have access to half the bed. Move the opposite board, and we have access to the other half. It's as simple as that - far easier than removing commercially available cloches or netting systems.
In pictures - netting is stapled to boards. Polythene could equally well have been used, to form a low cloche.
Since the boards are supported by stakes, each board can be moved very easily, towards the centre, allowing weeding or harvesting to be carried out on half the area of the bed. By moving the opposite board, we have almost immediate access to the other half of the bed.
If the boards are 15cm high - a typical height - then that's high enough for any plants in the earlier stages of their growth, the stages when we very often use cloches. These include early potatoes, which can be planted much earlier by using this system - the end of February, unless the temperature is very low. You could achieve the same result by using commercial cloches, but this wouldn't be a cost-effective solution at all. Low-growing plants such as lettuce can be covered by polythene or netting throughout their growth.
By using another board in the middle of the bed, supported by one or two higher stakes, we can easily increase the height of the system, to accommodate taller crops. When polythene is used to make a cloche, there's the further advantage that the cloche sheds rainwater more easily. If this middle board isn't used, and the polythene sheet is flat, then small holes can be made in the polythene so that rainwater doesn't collect and weigh down the polythene.
We can increase the height of the netting by using another board running along the centre of the bed. This board is raised up by its stake -
The composting system also makes use of moveable boards. The two boards which form the basis of the system I've devised are
Keeping beneficial animals away from crops
It's easy to see that the netting-bed I've already described is very useful in protecting a crop, keeping birds away from strawberries, for example. How can it possibly be an advantage to keep beneficial animals from crops? I'm referring in particular to hedgehogs, frogs and some birds.
If lettuces or other crops are grown inside the protected area, then it's perfectly safe to use pellets to kill slugs and snails, and it's impossible for hedgehogs, frogs and birds to be harmed by them. This isn't a novel idea, but in order to protect beneficial living things from slug pellets, it's important that the protection system should be convenient to use. So far as possible, the common and routine work of the garden or allotment should be part of a fluid 'work flow.'
I favour, I practise organic growing, but I see every reason for diverging from strict organic practice in a few limited areas, above all in the case of slug and snail control.
I know that there are many organic gardeners who feel as I do - who make an exception in the case of slugs and snails. (I refer to this as the practice of limitation, the abandonment of complete consistency, of organic 'purity,' in this case, when reality seems to call for it.) To give one example, from Margaret Elphinstone's and Julia Langley's 'The Organic Gardener's Handbook:' we read '...even on beautifully drained raised beds there can be enough slugs in early spring to devastate the struggling cloche-grown lettuce and carrots, or the newly-germinating runner beans. In recent years I have been desperate about the devastation, and have resorted to dangerous metaldehyde bait.' But when it's impossible for beneficial animals and birds to be harmed by the bait, then the only valid objections, I think, are ones based on maintaining complete organic consistency.
Alternative, non-chemical methods all have disadvantages. I do what I can to help beneficial animals in my allotments, but not simply because they are useful. Their welfare is important. Without wishing, of course, to criticize these beneficial animals in the least, their efforts do fall short of controlling slugs and snails effectively enough in all circumstances! Traps containing beer or another attractant kill beneficial creatures as well as slugs and snails. Removing them by hand (preferably a gloved hand) and disposing of them by whatever method is favoured, will fail to protect those runner beans. Biological control by nematodes is expensive. Time after time, you're likely to see all your hard work ruined, to find your seedlings decimated, like chickens after a fox has done its worst.
I oppose the notion that because a method is supposedly, or actually, more 'virtuous,' for example in not involving the use of manufactured chemicals, that all the advantages lie with this method and all the disadvantages with less virtuous methods. I refer to this as the practice of alignment, all the advantages on one side, all the disadvantages on the other. Alignment ignores complexities and inconvenient facts. I believe that organic methods of growing have far more advantages than non-organic methods, but this is based on exhaustive study. It isn't simply an assumption.
Another concept I use is that of the survey, which involves this attempt to list all the considerations which are relevant, based on information which is as complete as possible, but not simply information: on values too, including ethical values, aesthetic values. Many criticisms of organic practice are based on a severely restricted survey. If it could be shown that pesticide residues in fruit, vegetables and grains are not at all a substantial hazard, and the claim is then made that organic methods are unnecessary, then the survey used is completely inadequate, ignoring the benefits to wildlife, as well as other benefits.
A fleece-bed. Who needs a greenhouse or polytunnel?
This is deliberate exaggeration. I don't in the least deny the usefulness of a greenhouse or polytunnel for all sorts of purposes. But for some purposes, people who have a greenhouse or polytunnel would do better to use fleece instead. (The possession of a tool or piece of equipment doesn't guarantee that using it will always be the best course of action.) For these same purposes, people without a greenhouse or polytunnel need feel under no disadvantage.
In particular, 'starting the plant off' is better achieved in situ, in the place where the plant will grow to maturity, than in a greenhouse or polytunnel, if at all possible. To state the obvious (and at some length, in this paragraph and in the next few paragraphs) if a plant is started off in a greenhouse or polytunnel, then we have to move the plant from there to the place where it will grow to maturity. However, not just move 'the' plant but often many, many plants. If the plants are started off in the greenhouse or polytunnel, then they have to be watered. Outside, unless there are drought conditions, they will be watered for us.
Sowing seeds directly in the soil can be carried out very rapidly. Very often, we can use a dibber, which is quicker to use than a trowel and which involves a better 'work flow.' For all but tiny seeds, push the dibber into the soil, drop in two seeds, push a little soil over them and move on. The use of a greenhouse or polytunnel demands that we sow seeds in (peat-free) compost in individual pots or root trainers, and that we later transport perhaps a few dozen, a few hundred or a few thousand young plants to the bed where they will grow to maturity and there dig a few dozen or a few hundred or a few thousand little holes with a trowel to receive the plants. Sometimes, the work involved in all this deters a gardener from growing enough plants. Providing there is enough space available, there's the need to 'think big.' In the case of broad beans and peas, for example, a great many plants will be needed to produce adequate crops, taking into account the amount of broad beans or peas left after shelling.
If these broad bean seeds rot in cold, wet soil, early in the season, if young runner bean plants or French bean plants are killed by late frosts, then of course there won't be any saving in time or effort, but the use of fleece minimizes this possibility. Fleece should be put in place some weeks before the time for sowing the seeds, so that the soil is warmer by then. All of this is established knowledge of course. Very many gardeners and allotment gardeners do use fleece and are fully aware of its advantages. All I offer here are suggestions which I do think will make its use easier.
I keep fleece in place by using the standard moveable boards, supported by metal stakes. This is one method, under the boards:
This is another method, over the boards, with an obvious resemblance to the cloche-bed:
The boards have the very important advantage of providing substantial wind protection. It's not so much low temperatures as low temperatures combined with strong winds - the wind-chill factor - which kills young plants. Although the boards are low, the young plants are also low at this vulnerable stage in their lives and the boards shelter them very effectively. The boards are like very small but very useful fences. Since they are so small, the effects of turbulence can be discounted. Minor eddy currents are dissipated by the fleece.
Weeding the bed and attending to the young plants is very simple. The board is lifted and removed, allowing the fleece to be lifted immediately. The reverse operation is just as easy. Compare this with established methods:
Joy Larkcom has a very full and very useful explanation of the use of fleece (and also clear perforated films) in 'Grow your own Vegetables.' In the section 'Managing crop covers' (Page 130-131, she describes methods of anchoring them. 'The most secure method of anchorage is to bury the edges in 5cm/2in deep slits in the soil, made on either side of the bed with a trowel. Push the soil back against the edge of the film to keep it in place. This is most suitable for perforated films, which are in place for shorter periods. The disadvantage is that gaining access to plants means unearthing the edges.' And, 'For easier access, anchor films and fleece at the edges with purpose made plastic pegs, metal tent pegs, metal piping, or small but strong polythene bags filled with sand or sail. These are much easier to lift when access is required and more practical (as less abrasive) for fleece. Covers can also be carefully stapled to boarded edges with a staple gun.'
The disadvantages of these suggestions are many. Crop covers secured by plastic pegs and so on are vulnerable to the wind. Purpose-made pegs cost money - not a minor consideration if the area to be protected is at all large. If the covers are stapled to fixed boarded edges, how is access to the crops achieved? The use of removeable boards in my system eliminates all these difficulties.
In suggesting improvements to the procedures recommended by Joy Larkcom, which in any case are simply established - but, I think, imperfect - procedures, I don't for one moment make any general criticism of this book, or her other books, which I admire very much for their thoroughness and general usefulness. They contain far more than recommendations about the use of equipment, of course. The same can be said of so many other books which recommend these and similar procedures but which also contain indispensable advice.
A greenhouse or polytunnel can't be used for the propagation of the plants very early in a typical season, any more than the soil outside, unless they are heated very expensively. Electrically heated propagators remain very useful for this purpose: providing a limited number of plants for a very early start.
I generally use a system of beds which are 120cm wide, with the narrower paths 60cm wide and the broader paths 90cm wide. The length of the beds in one of my two allotments is 3.80 metres for each bed, a practical length. Each bed has an area of just over 4.5 square metres. Ideally, rather longer beds would have been preferable, so as to give each bed an area of 5 square metres. This makes it very simple to work out how much lime or manure or compost to apply, or the amount of seed or seed potatoes to order and use, given the recommended rates or amounts per square metre. Even so, the calculations to make allowance for the difference aren't difficult and in most situations, precision isn't necessary.
Generally, though, the beds I use are 2.4m long and 1.2m wide, since 2.4m is a standard length for planks and gravel boards. Sawing one 2.4m board in half gives the two end boards for a bed.
The practicalities of making moveable boards
A cheap and easy way to make beds surrounded by moveable boards, if you can't obtain reclaimed timber: you buy 3 gravel boards, each 2.4 metres long. You saw one of these in half to make the two end sections, each 1.2 m long. The other two boards make the two longer sections. You attach a stake half way along each board and push the stakes into the ground. After perhaps ten minutes work you have a boarded bed which is 2.88 metres square and at a total cost of a little under 13.00 - just under 3.00 for each gravel board and just under 1.00 for each metal stake. To be more exact, you have not just a boarded bed but a bed whose boards have many different useful functions (not all of them described here.)
As in the case of the boards used for making composters, if Gardman metal stakes are used to support the boards and the stakes are simply fixed to the board with screws, then the screws will almost certainly work loose before long. The secure fixing method I use is a little more elaborate, but not very much, and it's quick to implement. It solves the problem.
There are small gaps between the borders at the corners, but small metal corner plates are easy to obtain, even if they're not designed specifically for this function. The boards aren't fixed to these plates. By using them, the bed will look just as neat as any bed which uses the usual inflexible system of boards fixed to corner posts -
There are other methods of obtaining neat corners, with no gaps, which I don't describe further here.
Plastic boards? With a plastic water butt, a plastic composter and beds surrounded by plastic edging boards, all we need are plastic flowers to complete the look. I do support the use of plastic for water butts, for most purposes, as the most practical material, as I point out in the page on composters, but I give there the arguments against using plastic for composters and the same arguments apply in the case of plastic for edging boards.
Plastic becomes brittle under the action of UV light, and then it has to be disposed of. Plastic can't be recycled any number of times. At the end of its (quite short) useful life, the eco-friendly plastic boards will probably end up in a land-fill site. There's an energy cost in manufacturing a product made from recycled plastic - another contribution to global warming. It makes no sense at all to use plastic for edging boards, when the alternative, wood, a renewable resource, is clearly superior. The wood may be pressure-treated or untreated - it's best to use untreated wood, even if the risk to plants and the environment in general from the chemicals used to treat wood is very small. Whether treated or untreated, the wood will last longer than plastic in my system, since the wood is raised above soil level by the metal stake. It's wood resting on soil which rots the fastest, by far. The inside of the wooden boards will decay faster than the outside, but this side is hidden from view. The outside of the board will look good for a very long time.
A large proportion of the land in my allotments is given over to narrow beds, surrounded by boards. 'Beds surrounded by boards' are very very widely used. Even people who don't use the system very often would like to use it.
The bed system does have disadvantages if we use the methods commonly advised for their cultivation (methods which I don't use.) Using these methods, when we plant or harvest, we have often to kneel, in an uncomfortable position, and lean a considerable distance in a contorted position to reach the centre of the bed. This isn't a rational way of achieving the objective.
For some purposes, it may be preferable to use much wider beds, but still surrounded by boards, which, of course, being attached to stakes, can easily be lifted and moved. The boards are 'dual-purpose.' They act as boundaries to the beds but if two boards are put side by side, then we have available a portable path, the exact length of the bed. The boards spread out our weight so that the soil isn't compacted. Planting and harvesting can be done without kneeling, and there's never a need to contort ourselves unnecessarily, but if we do need to kneel, then we have a surface to kneel on at all times. We're not kneeling in the mud, or having to move a mat from place to place.
Alternatively, we can set aside some of the growing area - or most of the growing area - as 'farmland,' which isn't surrounded by boards at all. We can use the boards we do have to create temporary paths.
This is useful in two very different situations: first, taking over an allotment or garden, when it's necessary to eradicate weeds, and second, tending a long-established allotment or garden. These have distinct problems of their own.
Suppose that we took over an allotment or large garden which is infested with weeds. We didn't want to use a chemical method to clear the weeds, but we didn't want to wait for a year or more to clear the weeds by using weed-control fabric. We did put down fabric, but only on the paths, covering the fabric with straw or wood-chips, perhaps. Alternatively, the black landscape fabric may have been left uncovered. Our narrow beds are 120 cm wide. Some of the paths are 60 cm wide, the others 90 cm. This, then, is the layout of our plot, after we've been cultivating it for a year or more. The brown areas are the beds we've been cultivating and the yellow areas, of course, are the paths, the fabric covered by straw, in this case. Only the narrower paths of 60 cm width are shown here, and only some of the beds and paths we've made, perhaps.
During the year, or more than a year, since we took over the plot, the weeds have caused us endless work, especially the perennial weeds. We've spent a long time pulling out their roots, Very often, we've left part of the root behind and the plant has continued to grow. The old and often quoted saying comes to mind, 'One year seeding, seven years weeding.' We've now many more years of heavy weeding in prospect, taking us away from far more interesting work. We wish we had soil available free of weeds, particularly those perennial weeds.
We do, of course! It's very near at hand, underneath the paths. Since we laid down the weed-control fabric and covered it with straw, all the weeds have been cleared - and they've decayed, leaving us with more fertile soil than when we started. This is what we could have done, when we took over the plot.
We could have made the paths wider, so that the beds and the paths were equal in area. At the end of the year or more, when the weeds under the paths have been cleared, we could have rotated the paths and the beds. Now, the paths have become our weed-free beds and the beds (which we've had to weed throughout the year) have become our paths. . After the rotation, obviously -
A year or more after that, when the weeds have been eradicated from the whole plot - in large part, of course, since they are never completely eradicated - we may well decide that we'd prefer to have available a greater cultivated area and that the paths should be their original width of 60cm instead of 120 cm. This is easy. We now make the paths 60cm. We give half of the remaining 60cm to the beds on either side of each path, so that now the beds become 150cm wide (Joy Larkcom's superb 'Grow your own vegetables' states 'The recommended width for narrow beds is 90 - 150 cm /3-5 feet wide.')
If we prefer to have 120 cm (or some other figure) instead of 150 cm as the final width of our beds, then we simply scale the starting numbers by the appropriate percentage.
In two years, then, we've obtained a weed-free plot. It won't stay weed free for very long, as with any plot, but the hardest part is over. The weeds which grow in the future will be far less troublesome and far easier to eradicate than the original ones. We've only had to do hard weeding in the first year. We haven't had to wait a year before starting to grow crops.
When I refer to the use of 'weed-control fabric,' then I don't exclude in the least more cumbersome recycled alternatives such as old carpet, which will present problems of disposal, but which are free.
In the usual methods of clearing an area of weeds, weed control fabric, or old carpet, are laid over the whole of the area. In my method, only half the area of weed control fabric (or old carpet) is needed. If weed control fabric is used, this represents a sizeable saving.
What are the distinct problems of established allotments and gardens, in which rotation of beds and paths can be helpful too? As in all of this page, I concentrate on fruit and vegetable growing by organic methods, and most of all on vegetable growing. This makes very heavy demands on the soil, and can make heavy demands on us. The new methods I propose make composting much easier, but the difficulty remains of finding enough compostable material. Any compost we make will benefit the soil, but making enough for all the allotment or garden can be difficult. Even if supplies of animal manure aren't a problem, transporting the manure to the beds almost certainly will be. After we've cultivated a plot for some years, many years, these problems become more acute. Cultivating the soil underneath the paths gives our plot a new lease of life, reducing the pressure on the land dramatically.
An alternative system - 'frames'
In this system, the four boards used to surround a bed are fastened together, but they are not fastened to any corner posts driven in the ground. The 'frame' is limited in size and weight and can be moved and removed very easily. Frames up to about 2.4m x 1.2m are practicable, unless very thick and heavy boards are used. This system gives many of the advantages of the boards attached to stakes. A number of boards can be placed over an expanse of weed control fabric, weighing it down and preventing wind damage. When the ground is cultivated, the frame can be removed to make hoeing, raking, sowing and harvesting easier. The frame can be used to secure fleece. One disadvantage is that the dimensions of the frame aren't adjustable. Above, I describe uses for an adjustable system - making a bed wider for potato planting and extending a bed so that a cloche will fit the space.
The image shows a frame on end. It had been used to surround a flower bed (part of it shown above) in one of my allotments but the flower bed was extended and the frame was now too small. Being light, it was easily transported to the other allotment and used to surround a different bed. This particular frame was free of charge - it came from a skip.
