Raised Bed

Raised Bed Gardening and Farming

Raised bed gardening and farming has many advantages over traditional gardening. If your locations has poor or hard to till soil either too rocky, too much clay or too sandy, with the raised bed garden , you put your gardening soil on top of the poor soil. The soil underneath is not a factor, very similar to container gardening.

How to build a raised bed garden

A frame is built, just 4 sides, usually about 6 inches high(15 cm), width up to 4 feet (122 cm) and whatever length will work for you. The frame is normally  open on the bottom  and top.  The frame is then put in place.  Then use one of the four methods below to make your garden.

  1. Simply fill the frame with your nutrient rich soil or potting soil mix.  If your area is prone to strong weeds forget this approach and go with either #2,#3 or # 4.
  2. Put a layer of newspaper directly onto the existing soil, covering weeds, grass etc  and dampen, then fill frame with your nutrient rich soil or potting soil mix.
  3. Put a layer of commercially available weed block fabric directly onto weeds and grass, then fill frame with your nutrient rich soil mix.
  4. Cut with shovel or gardening spade a outline outside the frame, remove the frame, use shovel  to remove all grass and weeds in the outlined area.  Place the frame back in the shallow hole that you just created and fill with your soil mix.
raised bed garden in a urban setting creating a backyard farm

Raised bed gardens are very versatile, allowing gardening where otherwise might be impossible.

A more in depth description

1:   What: Decide what you want to plant, think about what you like to eat. See what grows well in your location.

2:  Where: Decide where you want to put your garden. Check to see that it gets plenty of sun, most vegetables require full sun. Ones that require shade you can always add shade screen or shade with taller plants.

3:  Size: Decide on the size for your garden, remember, all parts of the garden must be accessible from outside of the box. Once planted you do not want to work on the garden from inside the box. Normally this would be about 2 feet from each side, so if your garden is up against a wall or fence where one side is not accessible, you would want to make the garden about 2 feet wide from the wall or fence (do not put a vegetable or herb garden against a wall that may have been painted with lead paint or fence that been pressure treated). If you can access all sides of your garden you can make it up to 4 feet wide and whatever length you please, remember to leave room to easily go around to access the rest of your yard. You may want to break it up into a few different gardens to create a path for walking and working. 3.5 feet is a pretty good width for path, allowing room to kneel and work. Height of the garden should be about 6 or 7 inches. If you are using lumber to build the frame, 2×6 or 1×6 will be fine.

4:  Material: Decide on what material you want to build it out of. Lumber will be fine, 1×6 or 2×6 will work great. Do not use wood that has been treated with chemicals such as pressure treated lumber often labeled pt at the building supply stores. Woods such as cedar,or cypress tend to last longer due to resistance to rot and insects. You could use brick or stone for a more permanent garden. Recycled plastic lumber would also work and be impervious to insects and rot, however is also more flexible and longer lengths may need to be reinforced with stakes. Note: you only have to make a frame to hold the soil in, you do not have to build a bottom, the potting soil is placed directly on top of your existing soil. For example: all you need is 4 boards 2”x6” x 4′ to make a 4foot by 4 foot square garden. Put together with outdoor grade deck screws or equivalent (make it easier by pre drilling holes for the screws first so as not to split the wood).

5:  Soil: Vegetables are only as good as the soil they were grown in. You could use a commercially available potting soil mix and that would work fine, I know of people who used miracle grow potting soil with excellent results. However this would tend to be expensive. A less expensive alternative is to mix you own potting soil from coir, peat, topsoil, composted manure and vermiculite,

Coir is shredded coconut husks,   very good stuff, be sure to purchase good quality that has been  processed for gardening.  Coir that is processed for other purposes may have salts and the fibers may be shredded too short .

There is a link on this page, should be on the right. to a book called “All New Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew, in his book he has a formula he calls Mel’s Mix, I would highly recommend using his soil mixture. Mel’s book is also a great resource for raised bed gardening (his version is call square foot gardening).

6:  Plant your garden. Do all of your planting from outside of the frame, you do not want to compact the potting soil inside of the frame. You should be able to reach the entire garden from outside of the frame. You do not have to plant in rows, many small plants you can leave 5 or 6 inches of space around and larger plants like tomatoes 12 or 14 inches all around. A great reference for planting and spacing is again Mel Bartholomew’s book  All New Square Foot Gardening (see amazon link on this page at upper right).

7:  Enjoy

Advantages of raised bed gardening

  • Poor soil is not a factor, as you put your soil mix above the ground soil
  • Easier to work, being slightly higher makes the garden easier to work for most people
  • Less weeding, easier weeding, being above the yard , normally there will be less weeds to contend with.
  • You have full control over the soil you plant into
  • Efficient use of space,  the entire bed area contains plants, plants can be planted close together, no wasted space for rows
  • Less susceptible to flooding

Disadvantages of raised bed gardening

  • Initial setup can take some time,  normally you need to build or purchase  a frame to hold the dirt in place.
  • Can initially be more expensive to set up,  purchasing materials for frame and also the soil mix.
  • May require more watering.  roots do not tend to go down as deep, consequently need to be watered more often depending on your soil mix.
beautiful tulips in raised bed gardens

Raised bed gardens are not limited to vegetables

You can build the raised bed garden yourself from lumber or you could purchase a kit. If you use a kit, it is much easier, although a little more expensive. You can order kits online at Amazon, or Burpee “Raised Bed Garden System” You could also just order the corner kits here “Raised Bed Garden System” (relatively inexpensive ) and purchase the wood at you local lumber store and save some of money.

“Raised Bed Garden System”

At the time of this writing one of the best deals is the 4×4 complete kit from Burpee  above, this kit includes composite boards that is long lasting.

When planting a raised bed garden, or any garden for that matter, use the best seeds or plants available, and that means using heirloom seeds and plants for better flavor and more disease and pest resistance. You can also substantially decrease the effects of insects, pests and disease organically with interplanting and companion planting.  Also check out our page on how to grow mouth watering tomatoes

 

Gardening by the footFor inexpensive Gardening E books including “Grow bed gardening book” and “Gardening by the foot” and more inexpensive gardening e-book downloads using the Mitteider methods for a bountiful harvest.

 

Grow bed gardening ebook download

 

 

 

 

PS be sure to get your free 78 page gardening ebook

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