Growing contaminant-free fruits and vegetables in an elevated region is good for your back, health, appetite, and the climate. These ideas will enable you to create an organically raised garden bed.
Any gardener knows that having the right soil will make all the difference in getting excellent garden outcomes. Sadly, not every garden is blessed with high-quality, nutrient-rich soil. A gardening raised bed is the ideal solution. You can manage your land using raised beds and learn to grow beautiful flowers, fruits, and vegetables.
Reasons for Building a Raised Garden Bed
In a recent discussion, when discussing gardening, I was told that raised garden beds are the most suitable for the best outcomes. I was eager to know more, doing some of my work and creating a list of ten reasons why elevated garden beds are much better than the alternatives.
Why do the garden beds elevate better? Raised garden beds provide the plants as well as the gardener with a range of benefits. They do not need the same comprehensive procedures for setup and treatment as other gardens do. With simple upkeep, fewer pests and weeds, and plenty of stylish raised beds are favored over the conventional garden directly on the ground.
Planting beds raised are the ideal alternative to traditional day-to-day planting. Not only that but caring for plants and flowers in an elevated bed is fairly simple and ideal for people with experience in gardening at all stages.
So, what makes such a basic structure so special among its counterparts?
Looking to decide this year how to plant your garden? You may have learned that many people use elevated garden beds instead of conventional methods of gardening. There are a few really valid explanations of why they do so. In this book, we’ll talk about 10 explanations for this year’s selection of raised bed planting for your plants.
Elevated beds vs. garden boxes You could often hear people refer to elevated beds as garden boxes. Simply placed beds are when soil is elevated above the surrounding soil and embedded in a frame made of wood, rocks, concrete blocks, or other innovative methods. The raised beds are not the same as garden planters. Planters are large containers with bottoms that keep the soil from dropping out. The beds are elevated and have no bottoms.
The soil in a raised garden bed is safer without tilling.
The soil on the ground must go through a particular planning phase before the seeds can be planted in the field when preparing to plant a brand-new garden. This method involves sifting through the soil using a tool called a garden tiller and adding nutrients, including mulch and fertilizer, into the mix.
This is important before planting seeds into the soil since the soil must be loose and aerated enough to provide the new plants with nutrients. The soil would usually be naturally divided into hard formations that are dried up and not ready to receive and take care of the seeds to be planted.
This is a natural phenomenon that happens due to weather conditions, including rain and moisture that can cause the soil to clump together as well as ultraviolet heat that can dry it up. In addition, the tilling cycle of the garden needs to be repeated annually to maintain the consistency of the soil in the garden.
However, elevated garden beds don’t need too much planning at all. In addition, any form of mulch, fertilizer, compost, and manure can be regularly sprayed directly into a raised bed on top of the soil. Because of the naturally occurring processes in this type of garden bed, there is no need to do manual labor to work these materials into the soil.
Both of these natural processes are due to the effective drainage rates that occur in most elevated garden beds, as well as the helpful insects that live within the vegetation. In a raised planter, the worms that crawl through the dirt tear the soil apart and loosen it as they walk.
The soil rotation and loosening cycle is suitable for any garden without some kind of human intervention since manual tilling can often create more problems than it can solve. One of these problems that will be discussed in a future portion of this book is the spread of weed growth that typically happens after the soil is deeply damaged and tampered with by force.
It Is Easier to Maintain a Raised Garden Bed
To go along with the fact that garden beds are raised effectively till their own soil, they often need much less maintenance than a traditional garden. The bed is “raised,” or, in other words, elevated, just as the name implies. As a result, the gardener doesn’t have to stand on their knees or bend over continuously to protect their plants.
Rather than placing themselves at risk for a serious back injury or otherwise increased tiredness, the process of applying nutrients to the soil and picking flowers now requires the gardener only a limited reach.
They would also spend substantially less time caring for the plants and altering the soil’s location without having to run a tiller and cultivator machine over the land several times during the garden’s existence.
Because spreading nutrients and fertilizers into the soil of an elevated garden bed only needs to be dispersed across its surface, this would effectively be one of the only tasks needed to maintain the garden’s safety.
With constant irrigation and fertilization, there really aren’t many more maintenance activities involved in keeping your plants healthy and prosperous.
Attractive
Apart from all the wonderful conveniences that come with planting your garden in an elevated plot, this method of planting is much easier on the eyes as well. With a raised bed, the specified line between where your garden begins and ends will look cleaner than it would without one.
They can be planted almost anywhere, and are more likely to satisfy the front or backyard town rules or neighborhood guidelines for gardens. On top of that, raised beds make separating paths and walkways easier.
In all shapes and sizes, raised garden beds come with special designs that can suit any house, yard, or group. If you are more traditional, rustic, or modern in nature, there’s a garden bed for you out there.
This could be one of the top reasons some gardeners choose raised beds in the garden! Garden beds raised are really cool! You can use your imagination and creativity to design any form of garden bed! Some people use it to accentuate their yards and transform their gardens into a centerpiece.
Raised Garden Beds Will Help to Keep Animals and Pests Away from the Crops
Since raised garden beds are raised from the ground and are typically surrounded by some sort of shelter, it is more difficult for insects to climb up the steep sides to get to the plants. However, slugs still can get inside the planter, even if the altitude gets in their way.
You should take preventive steps to keep the animals out of your yard. The easy placing of a special cloth at the bottom of a raised planter will prevent rodents and groundhogs from digging into the bottom to steal food from your garden.
If there are bigger animals like horses or deer in your planter field, you may want to buy a special fence to go around the edges because they would be able to access the plants easily in the absence of one.
The height of the barriers in the elevated garden bed will prevent most dogs, cats, and other pets from walking or urinating on the ground. As well as flying animals such as birds, it is possible to mount marked walls, coverings, and hoops on the sides of the plant to keep them from landing directly on your plants.
Rodent protection
What rodents are you used to under your garden in the tunnel and kill your vegetables? A variety of rodents fall into that group. The list includes Voles, Moles, Gophers, Ground Squirrels, or any other rodent living on the land. With elevated garden beds, rodent attacks can be very easily avoided.
When you prepare your garden beds, this takes a little forethought on your part, but it’s really painless. I would suggest that you lay the chicken wire down your bed before filling it with soil and extending it several inches beyond the bed to cover it. If you’re not used to dealing with burrowing rodents, then you might just skip this stage. But, if this is your first planting, or you’re starting out a new spot, I strongly encourage you to be careful and put chicken wire along the bottom of your garden bed.
You wouldn’t want your beds to be stripped in order to lay wire like an afterthought. That could turn into a protracted operation.
Fewer Weeds
Said Plenty! I’m selling it! Garden beds raised raising the number of weeds you’ll need to remove this garden season. There are several explanations why this occurs, but to put it plainly, it is because of the nature of the garden bed. Let me just explain. You begin by cleaning up the ground on which your garden bed will sit. This involves removing any grasses and weeds from the topsoil at the very least. It is best to till the ground 18 inches and remove rocks as well.
In addition to beginning with a clean surface, many people prefer to lie under their garden bed with newspapers, cardboard, landscape fabric, or hardware cloth to prevent it from growing up again. Eventually, the newspapers and cardboard will rot and provide the plants with nutrients.
Garden beds are then filled with nutrient-rich soil, and any weeds that do grow can be pulled very quickly as the soil is so loose and healthy. And note that digging up some weeds won’t break your back because you won’t be hunched to get to them on the field. Earn! Earn!
Most people will never believe that the process of tilling the field in preparation for a new garden would actually cause a greater amount of weeds to grow than they would naturally do. When the garden tiller machine rotates the soil in the field, the seeds from established weeds are spread through the soil. As a result, all year round, the weeds will begin to germinate from the secret seeds in the field.
This gives the gardener a boring and repetitive job, as they have to take the time to remove the weeds that grow around their plants and could potentially damage them. Whether pulled by hand or electrically with a cultivator, the method of regularly pulling weeds isn’t suitable for anyone.
While growing a garden in a raised bed, it is important to constantly provide nutrients such as mulch to the plants in order to avoid future weed growth. In general, weeds are much less likely to have a significant presence in entire raised garden beds because the soil is not tilled at all.
Strong drainage
A thing you need to remember when using conventional methods of gardening is how well your garden drains. This problem is taken care of with elevated garden beds. I love how many gardening issues are solved easily by selecting a garden with raised beds.
Elevated garden beds allow the water in the soil to drain freely so that the roots of your plants have sufficient air available. If you have an excess of water that’s standing, it can choke your crops. While plants have varying drainage needs, few can tolerate sitting in stagnant water. Strong roots mean plants are healthier.
When selecting well-draining soil for your garden beds, note that you can get the best results from soils that are abundant in organic matter and nutrients. Potting soil is not a good choice since it drains too quickly. As manure is high in nitrogen, be careful about how much manure you have in your soil mixture as well. Too much nitrogen can stunt your fruit production.
Doing a basic soil check using a home test kit like this one is a perfect way to find out what improvements to your soil you need to make. It costs just around $15, and the soil pH, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potash levels are measured.
The height and slope of elevated garden beds could not be more convenient than when storms and poor weather threatened the area they were being planted in. Elevated garden beds are much more prone to rising water and flooding several inches below them on the field. In the case of a storm, due to the planter’s height, the whole garden would be resistant to the consequences.
Many elevated beds often have a depth of at least 12 inches, which gives plants plenty of space to drain overflowing water while holding it above water levels efficiently. As a result, even under the most severe and wet weather conditions, these types of planters will drain better than a garden plot, which is directly on the ground.
Early Planting
By late winter, to get their seeds in the dirt, most gardeners chomp at the bit. You may be used to a short growing season if you live in a cold climate, like the northern parts of the U.S. The growing season in Idaho, for example, is estimated at 167 days. Compared with parts of California which have an additional 300 days of increasing time. That’s a huge difference, and you can see why it is really appealing to plant early!
The world is frozen in the winter, so it takes a long time to warm up. A nice thing about garden beds is that the soil in them appears to be cooler than field soil, indicating earlier planting and a longer season in the garden. This is fantastic news if you’re used to a short growing season and would like to see your garden starting earlier in the year!
During the winter, soil that froze tight will take some time to warm up. It is an initially slow operation. Elevated beds filled with a good composition of soil can effectively drain and retain the heat of the sun. That’s why you can start your garden earlier than conventional gardens with raised garden beds.
When the soil is reliably 44.5 ° F (7 ° C), hardy plants such as lettuce, radish, and peas can be planted. You should also seek to use black plastic to help the soil warm up and dry it out a little. One tip is to place your garden beds so they get the most out of the midday sun and won’t be shaded by trees or large structures.
Another advantage of the high degree of drainage is the opportunity to plant seeds earlier than normal in most uplifted planters. The plants are provided plenty of space by the planter bed to breathe and aerate, resulting in the soil being quickly dried and warmed for the best results.
This cycle occurs even faster than with soil on the ground, which is another reason why planter beds raised are directly better than regular gardens. The crops could even be able to continue growing throughout the winter months, depending on the quality of the soil in each individual planter.
Soil erosion mitigation
This is not a question to be taken lightly. Preventing soil erosion by the use of raised garden beds can be an essential point of sale, particularly if you live in an area that receives lots of rain. Many gardeners have to deal with their soil being washed away, meaning you, the gardener has a lot of work. And don’t forget about the potential cost of purchasing more property.
I think it is an important statement to suggest that the sides of your garden beds prevent your precious garden soil from eroding or washing away during heavy rain. While wood is the most frequent option, it’s not your only option. Many people prefer to use rocks or blocks of cement for their bedside sides. However, something to bear in mind is how strong those are. This can be inconvenient if, at any stage, you’d ever like to push your garden bed.
If you have holes or open spaces on the sides of your beds, it may be a smart idea to use plastic sheeting to cover the walls. This will not allow the soil to escape through those spaces. Also, don’t forget to level all directions of your raised bed. If it’s not level, instead of soaking into the field, the rainwater or water from your garden hose can run off and out of your bed. You don’t want that to happen because water that runs off will also take your healthy soil away and leave trenches you’ll need to fill in.
It is normal for different forms of bacteria and other contaminations to be found in soil in a typical garden that is plotted on the ground. This is especially important for people living closer to the city and potentially having toxic substances and elements mixed in the soil where vegetables may be planted. With the increased presence of vehicles in urban areas, tons of poisonous emissions can sink into the soil, as well as higher levels of lead already buried in the soil.
While certain steps should be taken to ensure that the soil in the field is as clean as possible for a vegetable garden, the gardener should rest assured that there are no contaminants of any sort in their soil when using an uplifting plant. It is possible because entirely fresh and clean soil is applied to the garden bed when the not yet polluted seeds are planted.
They Are Less Permanent
While raised garden beds are more likely to be accepted by neighborhood or landlord guidelines due to their sleek appearance and easy maintenance, there is still a risk that anything like this will not be allowed in your yard.
If a beautiful clean picture of a lovely raised flower bed doesn’t cut it, you can start your garden in something more temporary like a garden box. This type of raised plant can be removed entirely without any kind of digging required for installation. Even though raised planter beds are theoretically more portable than a standard ground garden, an even more temporary alternative is a garden box that is put directly on top of a tarp.
There’s just nothing permanent about a removable garden box, whether you’re limited by a lease agreement or just scared of commitment at your own yard.
Raised Beds Are Ideal For Beginning Gardeners
The job of planting and taking care of a whole garden can be overwhelming for someone who has never done it before. Luckily, elevated garden boxes make gardening action easy for people with all levels of experience.
This type of garden is not hard to care for at all, together with the very basic method of starting a garden in a raised planter. In fact, most beginning gardeners who start with an elevated garden bed will see success with beautiful plants and crops immediately, rather than learning from needless errors.
Elevated garden beds completely cut off the entire tilling and cultivation cycle of the soil before planting seeds. Going much further back to the early stages of garden planning, there are careful steps that must be taken to ensure that the form of soil that occurs in the field is in the first place also suitable for a garden.
This involves wetting the whole land area and waiting for a full day to analyze the dirt’s actions to decide what kind of soil it is. To be even more comprehensive with this process, you would need to buy a store-bought pH test kit as well.
In addition, the advantages resulting from elevated garden beds clearly outweigh the negative ones. It can become a tasteful decorative addition to any yard or group if you can commit to or obtain approval for the installation of one of those planters.
Who can grow and maintain a garden in an elevated garden bed is without limits, and higher success rates come with this type of plant along with the relatively low maintenance requirements.
Less strain
One big advantage you get is less strain on the back and knees by using elevated garden beds. Who wouldn’t want that money? This is because it builds elevated beds with walls that are at least 6 in. To a height of 1 foot, thus reducing the need to lean over as often as you work in your yard. When you build your beds on 4-foot, sides, you’ll find it much easier to work in your garden.
I like the concept of using construction materials, which are also several inches thick, and we’ll have a very nice seating area as well. We can take out weeds, and test our vegetable growth and plant health while sitting comfortably rather than being hunched over. It will make your work in your garden much more fun, particularly if you have struggled with mobility.
When building your garden beds, you can get truly creative. If you wish, raise your beds to a standing level. I saw tables turned into garden beds. You can also mount wheels to make them mobile. Be imaginative, and do what’s going to make you happy. Some people may argue that these are planters rather than garden beds. It is just semantics, really. Garden beds are elevated and have no bottoms.
Opportunity
With garden beds created, everyone has the opportunity to start a no matter garden where you stay. Raised bed gardening is really beginning to rise in popularity as people are catching on to the fact that you don’t need acres of fertile land to have a healthy garden. Even if you have a little outdoor area or just access to a paved surface, you can still be a good gardener with raised garden beds.
I wish I had learned about garden beds many years ago when I tried to plant a garden in our hard desert soil in Utah. If I had used them instead of battling with the unfriendly desert soil, I would have been so much more effective. The trick to using pavement garden beds is to ensure they are dry, do not get waterlogged, and have enough organic matter so they can soak up the water. Using mulch is a must for any garden bed as well. Your mulch may consist of grass, hay, wood chips, or pine bark. The mulch can kill weeds and maintain soil moisture.
The most suitable situation for raised garden beds is, of course, that they are built on top of bare soil. When you are working on rough surfaces such as asphalt or concrete, be sure to build your garden beds to a depth of at least 18 in. That allows enough room for the roots to grow and be safe. The depth of the bed does not need to be that deep in raised garden beds that are constructed on bare soil, since the roots may also reach into the earth.
Loose Soil
Loose soil allows the free growth of the roots of your plants and produces healthy plants. Elevated garden beds achieve this effect if you build them well and fill them with a good soil mix. When planning your garden beds, make sure you can comfortably reach them through. This will mean, in most cases, no more than 4 feet wider. You might want them even smaller than that, sometimes.
The reason you don’t want them too big is that you’re never going to have to get into them to do any planting, weeding, pruning, harvesting, etc. You just want to reach in, not get the whole body in there. If you step into the sun and walk around, loose soil that you carefully picked, your garden bed will start to compact. Compacting the soil makes penetration of the roots more difficult and allows less stable plants for healthier ones.
But don’t worry if your beds are too big and for some reason, you have to get inside the bed. There’s one option there. Just take a board and spread it over your garden bed instead of sitting on it. That will prevent the compacting of the soil.
Strong drainage
One thing you need to remember when using conventional methods of gardening is how well your garden drains. This problem is taken care of with elevated garden beds. I love how many gardening issues are solved easily by selecting a garden with raised beds.
Elevated garden beds allow the water in the soil to drain freely so that the roots of your plants have sufficient air available. If you have an excess of water that’s standing, it can choke your crops. While plants have varying drainage needs, few can tolerate sitting in stagnant water. Healthy roots mean plants are healthier.
When selecting well-draining soil for your garden beds, note that you can get the best results from soils that are rich in organic matter and nutrients. Potting soil is not a good choice since it drains too quickly. As manure is high in nitrogen, be careful about how much manure you have in your soil mixture as well. Too much nitrogen will stunt your fruit production. Doing a basic soil check using a home test kit like this one is a perfect way to find out what improvements to your soil you need to make. It costs just around $15, and the soil pH, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potash levels are measured.
Organized
Being is one of the best things you can do this year to ensure you have a good garden. Gardening the bed raised helps you achieve that goal. Check out this book on gardening on square feet. By bringing the suggestions into the book, you will consistently and productively optimize your garden beds.
Another advantage you’ll find by using raised garden beds is how well your whole yard is arranged. I like organization, so maybe that’s why I like that argument very much. There are open spaces around your garden beds and in between. Allowing at least 2-3 feet of space between the beds is a safe idea. That will give you plenty of space to walk around or push through a wheel barrel. By arranging with raised garden beds, you’ll also appreciate your plants not being trampled on by children playing or meandering around animals.
Methods for Making Raised Beds
Raised beds are becoming increasingly common as your food movement is gathering numbers. They are simple to produce, easy to tend, and offer various advantages over ground tilling.
Perfect for urban and suburban planting, these styles of garden beds are. In reality, they can be constructed over concrete, making them suitable for abandoned lot and rooftop gardens, or when done on the ground, they don’t need to till the earth, which unleashes seeds and kills microorganisms in the soil. They also have a clean, maintained look to please neighbors.
Sometimes, they’re perfect for plants and growers too. The plants inside are easier to care for and reap from because so far, gardeners do not have to bend over. This is, therefore, much less difficult to monitor soil quality and water conditions in elevated beds as the soil is selected and applied to the bed, and the elevated nature allows for improved drainage and insect protection.
Also, on a wide scale, elevated double beds (where half of the bed is reached from one side and the other half from the other side) are great to grow staple crops such as grains, seeds, greens, and legumes.
1. Your Basic Box Bed
The most frequently raised bed that goes around is a simple box pattern (four feet by eight feet is pretty standard) usually fastened to a rectangle using lumber (the best is repurposed wood). These can be from around a foot or two tall anywhere and are packed with a mixture of organic soil and compost. Mulching soil with anything like straw or wood shavings is also a brilliant idea because that would minimize the need for irrigation as it removes evaporation, which would dry out the soil. Another useful feature that can be applied to this design is clamps that retain small-diameter PVC pipe for a longer growing season to create a frost-deterring greenhouse roof.
2. Sheet-Mulched Garden Bed
This version is perfect for building raised beds around existing lawn features such as trees. Sheet mulching is performed directly over grass or soil. It begins with a layer of material rich in nitrogen, such as manure, compost, fresh grass clippings, food scraps, or a good combination. First, it’s all filled with a sheet of cardboard boxes or multiple layers of old newspapers that will discourage weeds and attract earthworms. The boxes will then be weighted down with a strong layer of compost or topsoil. Thereafter, wood chips, more cardboard (if weeds may be a compost/topsoil issue), and straw will pile up to around four or five inches.
3. Weed-free Straw Bales
Straw bale gardens are a combination of container gardens and raised beds. Instead of carting in loads of soil or building boxes, bales of straw are simply spread anywhere a grower wants a garden. Straw bales are put cut side up and then soaked with water to decompose them. Plants can be added in a couple of weeks by making a little bowl within the bale and adding some soil and the seedling. The straw will break down, feed the plants, and at the end of the season, it will be possible to dump what remains after the final harvest into a compost heap for sustainable use next year or pile it up as mulch atop permanent beds.
4. Act with What You Have Got
Using what materials are available is the easiest way to make raised beds. When gardening materials fall from the sky in the late fall and early spring, when winter has left piles of fallen trees behind, are perfect for that. The sides of the raised bed can be shaped by sticks, branches, and tree trunks rather than timber. It can then be loaded up with organic materials such as leaves, kitchen scraps, grass clippings, paper, and everything else around it.
When it’s time to plant, the organic material and soil that is applied to the plant will provide a little opening. These beds can be beautiful because they make use of natural organic contours, rather than the straight edges of milled lumber.
5. The Double Reach Raised Row
In a more farm-like setting, double-reach raised rows are a great route to go for larger gardens. Measure the contour rows to be around 3 or 4 feet long and dig trenches with a shovel deep and wide around the rows, piling up the topsoil from the trench to create a wide elevated line. That will give the plants a doubly thick layer of quality soil. But a strong compost sprinkling would not be the worst thing. Mulch the rows with about four inches of straw, seedless grass, shredded leaves, shavings of wood, or some other material that is suitable. This will entail much less tilling and turning than traditional rows, which will provide considerably more rising space because there will not be so much wasted area between rows.
Whatever approach suits, a great garden experience for newbies and seasoned gardeners should be taken along with it. In most settings, it works well, except for those with very little rainfall, where sunken beds are the best option as they can absorb more water.
