How to plan a raised bed that crops all year round

Build the bed 1.2 m wide, as long as suits your space, and in a spot that gets at least six hours of direct sun. Then plan it in 30 cm squares, with tall crops on the north side and a follow-on crop pencilled in for every early one, so nothing sits empty from June onwards.

Size and width

The width is the one measurement that matters. Most people can comfortably reach about 60 cm into a bed, so a bed you can get at from both sides should be no wider than 1.2 m. Against a fence or wall, where you can only reach from the front, keep it to 60 to 75 cm.

Length is up to you. 2.4 m is a common choice because timber boards are widely sold in that length, and a 1.2 m by 2.4 m bed is big enough to grow a useful amount without being a chore to weed. If you have room for more, two beds this size with a path between are easier to look after than one wide one.

Leave paths of at least 45 cm, or 60 cm if you want to get a wheelbarrow down them. Narrow paths look neat on paper and are a nuisance in August when everything leans over.

A depth of 20 to 30 cm is enough on top of ordinary dug ground, since roots carry on down into the soil below.

Orientation and sun

Fruiting crops such as beans, courgettes and tomatoes need full sun. Leafy crops and roots will cope with a bit of shade for part of the day, but six hours of direct sun is a sensible minimum for a vegetable bed.

If you can choose, run the long sides north to south. Each side then gets sun for half the day and the bed is lit evenly. If the bed runs east to west, the south side gets the most light and the north edge gets the least.

What to put where

Tall crops cast long shadows, so they go on the north side: at the north end of a north-south bed, or along the north edge of an east-west one. That’s where runner beans, climbing French beans, tomatoes and sweet peas belong.

Medium crops such as courgettes, chard and kale go in the middle. Low, quick crops (radishes, lettuce, salad leaves, spring onions) go at the south edge, where they get full light and you can reach them easily for regular picking.

Two other things decide where crops go:

• Long-season crops together. Leeks, kale and parsnips occupy the ground for most of the year. Grouping them leaves the rest of the bed free to turn over quickly.
• Rotation. Try not to grow potatoes, tomatoes or brassicas in the same spot two years running. In one bed, a simple approach is to shift each group one section along every year.

Spacing by squares or rows

Seed packets give two spacings: within the row and between rows. The between-row figure assumes you’ll be walking between rows on an allotment. In a raised bed you don’t, so you can space plants evenly in every direction, roughly at the in-row distance.

The simplest way to do that is to divide the bed into 30 cm squares (a 1.2 m by 2.4 m bed gives you 32 of them) and plant a set number per square.

Per 30 cm square	Crops
1	Kale, potato, tomato
1 per 4 squares	Courgette
4	Lettuce, chard, broad bean, runner bean, strawberry
9	Beetroot, garlic, French bean, spinach, leek
16	Radish, carrot, onion sets, spring onion

Rows still make sense for some crops. Beans up a row of canes, or a line of peas on netting, are easier to support in a straight line. Mix the two however suits the bed.

Planning for the whole year

A bed planted once in May and left alone is empty half the year. So plan what goes in after each early crop comes out.

Early crops, sown from March, are cleared by midsummer: radishes, early salad, beetroot, early carrots and first early potatoes. Into those gaps go crops that can still be sown or planted in July and August. French beans can be sown outdoors until early August, kale planted out until late August, beetroot sown until early August, and lettuce sown outdoors until early September. Spinach and spring onions sown from late August stand through autumn and winter.

Then in October and November, as summer crops finish, you can plant garlic (until late November) and sow broad beans (from mid-October) for next year. That way the bed goes into winter with something growing.

Little and often also helps within a season. A square of radishes or salad every two or three weeks gives a steady supply, where a whole row sown at once comes ready at the same time and bolts.

These dates are for a typical lowland garden in England and Wales, with a last frost around 20 April and a first frost around the end of October. In Scotland, the north of England or a frost pocket, start two or three weeks later in spring and finish earlier in autumn. In the south-west, near the coast or in a city you can usually stretch both ends.

A sample plan for a 1.2 m by 2.4 m bed

This bed runs east to west, so the north edge is the long back side. It’s split into four rows of 30 cm squares, from north (back) to south (front).

Area	Squares	Spring and summer	Follow-on crop
Back row, full length	8	Runner beans, sown in May, 12 plants 20 cm apart up canes	Garlic, planted in October or November
Second and third rows, west end	4	One courgette, planted out in late May	Broad beans, sown in November
Second row, the rest	6	First early potatoes, 6 tubers, planted in late March or April	French beans, sown in July
Third row, middle	3	Beetroot, sown from April	Kale, planted out in late July or August
Third row, east end	3	Carrots, sown from April	Spinach, sown in late August or September
Front row, full length	8	Radishes, salad leaves, lettuce and spring onions, a square or two every few weeks	Spring onions and lettuce, sown in late August or early September

The back row of runner beans shades nothing but the path behind it. The courgette gets a full 2 by 2 block of squares on the west end, since one plant spreads well beyond a single square. And the front row, which you’ll pick from most often, is the easiest to reach.

Drawing a plan like this on paper works, but it’s hard to see the follow-on crops at the same time as the first ones. VegLog’s bed planner draws beds to scale and lets you slide through the year to see what’s in each part of the bed in any given month, which makes the gaps easy to spot.

Common planning mistakes

• Making the bed too wide. If you have to step on it to reach the middle, you’ll compact the soil you built the bed to avoid.
• Overplanting courgettes and squash. One courgette fills four squares by July. Two plants is plenty for most households.
• Nothing planned after June. Write the follow-on crop into the plan in spring, and buy the seed then, so you’re not stuck with bare soil in August.
• Tall crops on the south side. A row of beans in the wrong place can shade half a bed by midsummer.