Deep beds are a way of growing fruit and vegetables that have advantages over traditional growing of crops in rows or open fields.

Deep beds can be made from any number of suitable materials including wood,[ including scaffolding boards and industrial pallets] brick, concrete, plastic and many more materials. Deep beds are also used in a method called no dig, no weed gardening and it is all in the title which is the way i garden. The basic idea behind this is that each time you dig the soil over you bring poor soil to the top and return good fertile soil to the bottom. This is what Farmers do when they plough their fields and you only have to look at the clay they grow in to realise that their soil is extremely poor ad probably dead.

With no dig you avoid that and it allows the soil to build up a natural eco balance in the soil structure and the biggest bonus is there is no physical effort!! Now that might be good for a few people but for those of us who have seriously chronic spinal problems it means we can still grow a few bits for our tea.

Taken one step further in the no dig, no weed method is in fact no weeding. The aim of this no weeding part is to cover the soil with black plastic or a range of other items such as carpet, newspaper, cardboard, compost waste and then you plant though this top layer and the theory goes that you do not get weeds growing through the thick mulch.

I'm not a big fan of this part of gardening for a number of reasons. Carpet has dyes in them and they can and do leach out into the ground. As an organic gardener I want to know what is in the soil and chemicals from carpet dye's are not welcome.

Cardboard and newspaper are lesser of the two evils compared with carpet but there is still a possibility of press ink and dye getting into the soil.

Black plastic devoid's all the land of a lot of natural ingredients. If you doubt this leave a piece of black plastic in place for 3 years and each year look at the soil. It turns hard, light in colour and the weeds are still there but they traverse along under the plastic to the edges but not through it.

Un composted waste may have advantages in that it will rot down in situ but any bad mix of compost will attract flies and even rats if there is raw or cooked food in the mix. At least in a compost bin you can keep it all in one place.

My deep beds are made of wood and although I am deeply into recycling a the case for using new wood out weighed the available factors for recycling old materials.

I spoke to a large number of scaffolding companies and asked them if they had any damaged boards for sale. There are a lot of health and safety rules regarding scaffolding and the wooden boards used there on. Thus if a board is chipped, split or damaged in any way it cannot be used on a job. these companies usually either leave them laying around their yards, use them as chock wood for uneven scaffolding jobs or as firewood.

As deep bed culture took hold thanks to the popular TV programmes these companies started to sell these old boards but at a price that was virtually comparable with new boards.

If I had to purchase wood for my deep beds then I wanted cost effective boards and so I chose to purchase tanalised timber of 8" x2" or 200mm x 50 mm. This was more substantial than the thinner scaffold boards, available in longer lengths and guaranteed to last 20 years even if in contact with soil. If the scaffold boards had been cheap then you could factor in replacing them after say 5 years but not at the prices being asked for them.

The wood duly arrived in time for the hired labour to put them in place for me. It took the two lads 3 days to make the 4 deep beds and fill them with soil but it was worth it.

More to follow.