Posts Tagged ‘Build a Bed’

Raised Bed Kits – The quick way to start growing your own

The Cultivation Station Raised Bed Kits from Potty Innovations are simply the quickest and easiest method of putting a raised bed together, enabling you to spend less time building and more time gardening.

Even if you have a small space in which to grow, you’ll be amazed at the amount of nutritious vegetables you will be able to grow in containers, and let’s face it nothing tastes better than your own home-grown produce! Our raised bed kits offer you the opportunity to do just that, available in a number of sizes they are an easy to use and affordable solution to get you started with growing your own at home.

What are the benefits of our Raised Bed Kits:

• Quick and easy construction without tools
• Cost effective and an easy solution for beginners
• Lightweight sections for easy handling
• Defined sections for easy crop rotatio
• No sharp edges – splinter free
• Safe around children

What Can I Grow?

• Onions, spring onions, garlic
• Carrots, parsnips 
• Cabbage, lettuce, cut and come again salad leaves
• Chives, sage, rosemary, coriander, dill – many kinds of herbs
• Peppers, Tomatoes
• Cucumber, courgettes
• Sweetcorn
• Strawberries
• Flowers
• The possibilities are endless!

Start your growing today and get your garden working for you with a Cultivation Station raised bed kit from less than £50 including vat and delivery. Our 8 piece compact starter kit will allow you to plant an assortment of home-grown vegetables and herbs, so all you need to do is find a nice sunny sheltered spot and get on with the fun of growing. 

Whilst we are in the midst of the 2010 growing season, do come back and check up on the fun antics of our very own Virgin Gardener over the next couple of months to see what she has and hasn’t managed to grow successfully. She is pretty new to this ‘grow you own’ game after all!

Well, if you haven’t already seen it, visit the Potty Innovations YouTube Channel (or look under Essential Links on the right) to see our set-up and planting videos for the Cultivation Station and Clover planters.

We were lucky enough to have a lovely weekend last weekend and so I put my plan of action into play. This involved informing my other half that I thought it would be a good idea to expand the raised bed to accommodate the extra plants I had grown. Much to his dismay, he agreed and you can see the results in the video!

The raised bed itself took us about 15 minutes to take apart (with two people) as I had already filled most of the planters, so they were a bit heavy. It then took another 10 minutes to decide on a layout and five minutes to put it together. I thought it would take longer but it really was that quick and easy.

Here’s Daisy Boots Assembling her new 8 Piece Compact Cultivation Station

After finishing the raised bed assembly I realised just how much of a slope our garden is on as the planters are slightly staggered, hopefully they will sink into place soon.

I also realised that the bed is, well quite full of onions. There is something about having a large bag of onion sets that just wants to make you keep on planting them.

I have tried to be super organised this year and have labelled all the planters up so I know exactly what’s growing where. Unfortunately I have noticed that the kitties have been trying to pull the labels out and have run off with some of them, so maybe a mental note would be good too!

In other news I have been reading up on companion planting and have got as far as planting mint near cabbage which should deter the cabbage white butterfly and planting rosemary near carrots which will deter the carrot root fly. I am in the process of adding more herbs to the raised bed, so if anyone has any advice that would be gratefully appreciated.

Found my first snail in the garlic which Rich insists must be French, and also found two lovely little pesky slugs trying to breach the giant mighty walls of Castle Cultivation Station.

“Away with you, you unruly fiends”

I shouted from the Castle tower, before unleashing a wave of pellets.

That’ll show em!

Slugs, seeds, pests and itchy eyeballs – ah…… you know its Spring!

Last night we gathered up the Cultivation Station pieces ready for assembly in the garden.  We were so keen to get going we started after dinner!

With four large pieces and four corner pieces I was actually surprised I could easily walk around with them because they are so light. I was also afraid they might blow away and I would have to spend the rest of the evening knocking on peoples doors asking them ‘please sir/madam, can I have my Cultivation Station back’.

After Rich made me do ten circuits of our garden we eventually decided to put our new growing plot near the patio. Assembling was easy enough although being on a slope didn’t help when it came to locking the pieces together. Some of them were a bit tight to slide together at an angle so I found assembly on the patio much easier to do as it was a much flatter and firmer surface.

I was told by Daisyboots’ (ooops that’s me in trouble again) to put the grow bags in first, water them and leave them overnight and then plant in the next couple of days.
So we got the bags and I decided opening them would be best done with a firm stabbing motion of the trowel. Granted, in hindsight it wasn’t the best idea, and I hadn’t prepared myself for the smell that was about to emanate from said hole.
 
‘Is it supposed to smell like this?’ I asked. (long pause) ‘Yes’.

‘Oh dear’, my thoughts soon turned to the rest of the unopened bags that lay before me and the lack of gardening gloves.

Planting tomorrow hopefully!