Gardening in Raised Garden Beds

If you have decided to grow a vegetable garden, but are struggling with poor soil, a raised garden bed is a great option and a popular choice among gardeners. With a raised bed, even several inches off the ground, you can not only control the quality of your soil, but enjoy many other benefits as well.

If your raised garden beds are around 4 feet in width, you will be able to easily reach in to access your plants from either side, doing away with the need to step on the soil and compact it. Since roots need air to grow, reduced soil compaction will keep soil more aerated.

Expect your plants to grow bigger and produce better because of the quality, aerated soil, but also because raised garden beds drain water better than regular garden beds. Raised garden beds produce up to 2 times as much vegetables and flowers as ordinary beds.

Another bonus of a raised garden bed is that the soil temperature will warm a little sooner in the Spring and stay warmer a little later in the Fall. If your raised garden bed is 12-18 inches tall, you can actually garden while seated. By sitting on a gardening stool or wagon you can save your back from repeated bending sometimes needed to perform basic garden tasks like weeding, harvesting and pruning.

Garden beds can be made in wood, stone, and even corrugated tin. There are also kits available with parts made from high density polyethylene boards, faux stones, or cedar planks. You can even buy raised garden bed kits that come with "greenhouse" covers.

Here are a few more details about the different kinds of garden beds to choose from.

Wood

There are many opinions, as well as many options when it comes to using wood in out door projects. One of the main problems with wood is that over time, it will naturally rot and need to be replaced. You can lengthen the life of your wood garden bed in several ways.

The first way is to use chemically treated wood. This can come in the form of old railroad ties, or pressure treated lumber. This is actually such a touchy and controversial subject that it is encouraged to do some extra research on these products before making a decision to use them in a vegetable garden setting.