Be your own back-garden farmer

Want to eat organic food without paying the high prices? Grow your own in a garden designed to keep your table groaning with delicious food all summer

How to create a raised bed

Save yourself a lot of backache and build a raised bed for your vegetables or herbs to grow in. Ask at a builder’s merchant as they often just throw away broken scaffolding planks which can be used to build a raised bed.

• Mark out the area you want to use, making sure the soil below the space is of good quality if you want your vegetables to establish themselves. You can create a raised bed on hard core or a patio, but make sure you build it deep enough to support the root stock of whatever you want to grow.
• Cut planks of wood to be the sides of the bed and place them where they will go, making sure that they match in size and height. When they are roughly placed in the ground, use a mallet to drive corner supports in to each of the inside corners of the structure. These supports should end up being the same height as the planks.
• Nail the boards to the corner supports, once they are firmly in, so that you have a strong rectangular structure. Fill the bed with top soil, treading it down as you fill so that the soil is compact, but not solid. Now you can start planting – water plants in well.

Chosen by House to home