Tips for Raised Bed Gardening

by Robert Schpok

Raised bed gardening will provide you with the unique opportunity to have a garden that will be the envy of the neighborhood. You will produce more, have higher quality vegetables and spend less time maintaining them. All of the work is done the first time your rasied beds are created and you will enjoy the fruits of your labor for years to come.

1. Reasons for Raised Beds

Creating a raised bed gardening system is a fantastic way to control the soil you use, control weeds and produce the most garden vegetables and flowers in the smallest space possible.
Rasied bed gardening allows you to easily control the environment in which your garden plants grow - temperature and moisture.

Raised bed gardens allow you to start your garden sooner and extend the growing season by greenhousing the raised bed.

Raised bed gardening additionally makes it very easy to fertilize and control any types of garden pests that might otherwise damage your garden plants.

2. Materials for Raised Bed Gardening

A limited number of materials are required to create a raised bed for gardening - To build one 4'x8' Raised Bed:

(3) 2"x12" treated wood from any local lumber yard (12) Screws or long nails (24) small nails or tacks string or twine

Optional: These are used for staking, creating a greehouse effect, and controlling weeds in your rasied beds:

Roll of clear plastic, stakes, and black plastic.

3. Building the Raised Bed

Take one of the 3 pieces of wood and cut it in half - creating two 4ft end pieces. Now just create a box by nailing or screwing the four pieces of wood together. When finished you will have a 4'x8' box that stands 12" high.

Find a good location, consider amount of sun and mark off a spot that is 4x8 feet for your raised bed. Either by hand or with a rototiller prepare the area, digging at least a foot deep. If the soil is poor you may want to add things to improve the drainage before placing the raised bed over the area.

4. Create great soil for your Raised Bed

Having great soil filling the Rasied bed is the key to having a fantastic garden. Use a combination of regular garden soil from your yard, compost, perlite, manure, etc. so that the soil in your raised bed box is rich for growing garden vegetables and/or flowers. You can purchase garden soil additives at the lumber yard, department store or local greenhouse.

5. Raised Bed Gardening - Finishing Touches

Once the garden soil is in, place small nails every 12" around the top and run your string to create one foot squares. These act as dividers and planting guides for your raised beds, also referred to as square foot gardening.

Now you are ready for planting. If you are planting a little earlier than usual, you may want to greenhouse your rasied beds if the weather is a bit cold. Merely place stakes around the bed at the edges, cover with plastic and hold it in place with clothes pins.

Another nice touch is to place a dripper hose that runs up and down the rows of your rasied beds for an instant irrigation system.

I have been using raised bed gardens for years and would never go back to traditional ways. Once established, raised beds require minimal time year after year. One can vary the size of their rasied bed(s) to create a very well organized and designed layout. Give raised bed gardening a try - you will love it!

For more detailed information and photos visit the site below.
Robert Schpok - Has been using raised bed gardening in combination with square foot gardening techniques for fantastic results for decades. See rasied bed gardening at http://www.verygoodbuys.com/Raised_Beds.html :
http://www.verygoodbuys.com/

About the AuthorRobert Schpok - Has been using raised bed gardening in combination with square foot gardening techniques for fantastic results for decades.