Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a definite snootiness about using raised beds for growing food, which I find ridiculous. It’s almost like if you are not out there double digging your soil and breaking your back to suffer for your vegetables, then it’s considered cheating. Personally, I am all for the occasional cheat if it helps me to grow better veggies or grow them with less time and effort expended.

Generally speaking, you need a good spade’s depth of quality top soil in order to grow good veggies. Unfortunately, GIYers now face twin barriers to this approach – poor soil depth/quality in their garden, and lack of time to spend improving the soil quality. In most housing estates in Ireland for example, the “soil” was created by departing builders throwing a miserly inch-thick layer of top soil on top of the builder’s rubble – not the most promising growing medium.

A raised bed is created by adding a good layer (at least a foot) of soil on top of the existing soil, usually using a frame of timber to keep the soil in place. Instead of digging down in to the soil therefore, you are effectively raising the level of it up by a foot. The raised bed is therefore an ingenious cheat to provide good-quality, deep, fertile soil that’s perfect for planting.

It goes without saying that if you are blessed with good-quality, deep soil in your garden and plenty of time for digging, then you don’t need raised beds. But if you don’t, by bringing good-quality soil in to raised beds in your garden, you can start growing promising veggies instantly.

They have a number of other benefits. Typically, you don’t ever stand on the soil, which means less soil compaction and therefore better drainage (the soil will dry out quicker). They also tend to extend the growing season because the soil in raised beds warms up earlier than the soil around it. You can therefore start planting earlier in the season. The dreaded slugs tend to be less of an issue too because they face more barriers to get in to the bed.

When it comes to the shape and look of your raised beds, you can let your imagination run riot, but don’t sacrifice functionality for aesthetics.

I went nuts a few years back making triangular-shaped beds – they looked lovely, but were highly impractical. The important thing to remember is that you are not supposed to be walking on the soil at any point, so you must be able to reach in to the centre of the bed from the sides. A 4ft (1.2m) wide bed is therefore considered ideal because the centre of the bed can be reached from both sides (depending how long your arms are I guess!).

The beds should be a minimum of 25cm deep. You can go deeper if you want (even up to waist height) – deeper beds have the advantage of being easier to work at (no stooping etc) but they drain very quickly and are therefore difficult to keep watered in summer. You also need a serious load of soil to fill them.

A typical argument against raised beds is their cost. In reality you can spend as much or as little as you want. You can buy raised beds or make them yourself from old scaffolding planks or salvaged timber. See my five-step plan below for some more useful tips to get you started. CL