If you would like to grow your own flowers and vegetables but the soil in your yard is in poor condition, a raised garden bed could be a great option for you. Also known as elevated garden beds, raised garden beds are open, walled, structures built above the ground in order to contain soil and plants to garden with.
A raised garden bed is not just a way to grow plants, raised gardening can also be a fun activity to pass the time while you are at home during the pandemic. You could decide to build your own diy raised garden bed out of wood, sheet metal panels, plastic, or found materials, the options for raised garden bed ideas are endless.
Why Should I Do Raised Gardening?
Even if the soil in your backyard is in good condition for growing, you may want to consider building a raised garden bed for a variety of reasons. Here are some of the advantages of raised gardening:
You can be in control of the quality and consistency of the soil. Most raised garden beds are designed so that every plant can be reached by a gardener without stepping foot into the bed. This makes it easy to maintain fluffy soil because you can easily avoid stepping on the soil and causing it to become hard and compact.
The temperature of the soil in an elevated garden bed warms up more quickly than the ground does. This means that you can get to work in your raised garden bed earlier in the year than in a regular garden.
It is easier to take care of. Raised garden beds tend to be lower maintenance than in-ground gardens. The frame creates a garden border that makes it harder for tree roots and weeds to penetrate a raised garden so there is less work for you. You can spend your time planting instead of weeding!
How To Build A Raised Garden Bed
Building a raised garden bed can be a worthwhile and fun activity for everyone, from the novice builder to an experienced contractor. Here is a general outline of the steps to build raised garden boxes:
- Pick your place. To select the optimal site for your raised garden, consider what you would like to grow, do some research to determine how many hours of sun your desired plants will need and pay attention to how the sun hits your yard. For flowers and vegetables, you should ideally aim for a spot that gets a minimum of 8 hours of sunlight.
You will also want to find an area that is flat or at least mostly level.
- Design your size & shape. You can get strategic with this step! Most people plan their raised garden beds so that they will be able to access all parts of the garden without stepping foot into the bed. This is to avoid repeatedly flattening the soil, which can cause compaction over time.
Planning a bed that you will not step in means that you probably will not want to make it too wide. Many gardeners find that 4 feet is a nice width for their elevated gardens because it allows them to reach the center from any side. You have more freedom with the length, build your bed as short or long as you would like.
In terms of depth, six inches is generally a good depth, although you may want to increase that by a few inches if you would like to grow root vegetables or if your subsoil is in poor condition (subsoil is the ground soil that is directly under the raised bed).
- Get your planting site ready. Make sure to remove any rocks from the place that you would like your raised garden bed to be. It is also a good idea to loosen the subsoil before placing your bed on it. You can also use a layer of material such as landscape fabric or newspaper to smother the ground soil and then put the soil for your raised garden bed on top.
- Construct & level your frame. The easiest material to work with to make a raised garden bed is wood, just make sure that you find lumber that is resistant to rot. Once you construct your frame, you should use a level to make sure that it is balanced and level in all directions. If you skip this step, you may have issues with your water runoff.
- Place & fill your bed. Once you place your raised garden bed in the spot you have chosen for it, you are ready to fill it with soil. For your raised bed soil, find a high quality mixture of soil to use, ideally this would be a nice mixture of topsoil, compost, and maybe even manure.
Raised Gardening Tips
Now that you know how to build your elevated garden beds there are some things to know about taking care of your raised garden. While these gardens are generally low maintenance, there is some upkeep involved, but that is where the fun comes in.
Here are some of the things that you can do to take care of your raised garden.
- Refresh your beds with new soil every year. Make sure to add 1 to 2 inches of topsoil every spring
- Keep it fluffy. Use a garden fork to fluff your soil in between seasons so that it does not become compacted. You do not want to waste all of the extra efforts that you made to avoid stepping into your raised bed.
- Add mulch or a cover crop for protection at the end of each season. This can help ward against tough winter weather and erosion. If you decide to plant a cover crop, you will also be helping increase the fertility of your soil during the next planting season when you till the crop into the garden bed. Some popular cover crops are ryegrass, clover, buckwheat, hairy vetch, and sorghum.
- Plan ahead. If you think of what you would like to plant ahead of each growing season you can maximize the quality and quantity of the plants that your elevated garden can produce.