Hi Michael,
We've been using raised beds for several years now. On balance, they have probably been our most productive vegetable and herb gardens.
We first set them up after first reading about them in Bill Mollison and David Holmgren's Permaculture books.
We have four of them and they were made from an 8' section of pit pipe (5' in diameter) sliced into four sections. They are very heavy but, at least, they won't go anywhere.
We've filled them about 18" deep with course sand (for good drainage) and then we add a mix of potting mix (bought by the trailer load), mushroom compost, composted cow manure and any spent coco coir that we have lying around.
We keep them well-mulched to inhibit weeds and to conserve water. In the past, we've used sugar cane mulch but most recently we used the trimmings from our bamboo plants. It makes for an excellent mulch.
The raised beds are perfect companions for a small aquaculture or aquaponics system. When we clean the filtration module out, we use the water solids to feed the raised beds.
That way, we achieve the core benefit of an aquaponic systems.....getting a crop of fish and a crop of plants for the same amount of water that it would otherwise have taken to just grow the plants......but at a much lower capital investment than grow beds. We can also grow a wider range of plants.
Gary
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