View Full Version : Raised bed gardening
Hi all. I'm considering doing raised bed vegetable gardens this year and would love some information from those who know.
What is the best material to build raised beds from?
What should I look for, for location in terms of sun to shade ratio?
What is a good size for a bed? I can do multiple beds if I want as I have a lot of space.
What is a good height for a bed? The bed would be going over the grass and I would prefer not to have to dig out the grass to put in the bed, just put over the grass. How deep would the soil need to be for things like onion, potato, carrot, tomato, pole beans, squash.
Soil options? Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
I built mine of wood two feet high and put plastic down to kill the grass over the winter. In the spring I ordered loam and a relative who decided to help without my knowing came over to my house and filled the beds with the loam without removing the plastic. I was horrified as how will it drain out properly? He then poked some holes in the bottom with a sharp stick which has allowed drainage, but the plant roots can't go down and I have had problems with lots of things growing well as a result. I think if you leave the bottom open it doesn't matter. Mine are 4' by 8' and if I had to do it over I would go with 3' instead so it's easier to reach the middle when weeding.
Hi Artist - Hubby and I do a lot of gardening in our raised bed planters. When we downsized a few years ago and did some renovations on our place that was something we had our contractor construct for us. We had debated on material and after watching our neighbours who used logs and then had to replace them years later, we decided to go for reinforced poured concrete. It was more expensive to be sure, but it will last forever and the edges are very comfortable to sit on. Also, there is no worry about wood chemicals (often found in preserved wood) leaching into our garden soil.
I would not recommend making your beds any wider than 4 feet. The reason for this is that when you are working on them, you want to be sure you can reach the middle of the garden. If they are wider than 4 ft you probably won't be able to reach the middle.
Our beds are about 18 inches tall and we find that is very good for both growing all types of veggies as well as a nice comfortable height for sitting on the edge (we are lazy gardeners *S*).
Our longest bed is 22 feet long. Hubby said if you make them too long you may have trouble with the walls caving in.
For soil we used a mix of 1/3 top soil, 1/3 peat and 1/3 manure. We also have two composters that we use to top up the gardens. Veggies LOVE compost! One of our composters is active (meaning we add to it daily) and the other is "cooking". After a year we screen the compost from the "cooking" composter and add that to our gardens. The the "active" composter becomes the "cooking" composter and the empty "cooking" composter becomes the "active" one. Hmm..I hope that makes sense.
Our gardens are south facing and we find that is really nice for us here in the interior of BC Canada. Part of one garden is protected from wind (we live in a very windy area) by being placed beside the house. Peppers don't like the wind too much so we use that area for them.
I don't know if you have deer or critters in your area like we do. The deer like the raised gardens because they don't need to bend down to eat. >:( So we purchased a garden scarecrow from the hardware store. It is actually a motion sensored sprinkler. We have ours on a timer and it goes on at 10 pm until 7 am. When anything moves within the scarecrow's range, a spray of water comes out. It works GREAT and I would HIGHLY recommend them. The deer would eat all our veggies and strawberries if we didn't have this. With it, the deer don't come near them! :)
Hope that helps. *S*
I would just mention that raised beds, while all the rage, aren't necessary if your've got decent garden soil. Evaulate your soil and perhaps you can save money and time.
I've gardened both with raised beds with hard sides, and raised beds, no sides. I'd never ever put solid sides on my veggie beds again. Besides the great expense of building them, there were many problems the sides themselves caused. Of course my soil is good - or at least I made it good over the years.
I found the solid sides restricted what I was doing. They were a problem watering - the corners and sides tended to dry faster. (SoCal here) If you ever get a ground-digging critter (gophers) it's nearly impossible to dig around the sides when looking for runs. Noxious weeds with runners are also more difficult to deal with. Insects, snails and slugs lived against the sides too.
The sides of mine were made from expensive 2" X 12" redwood heartwood and looked very nice. They lasted for about 10 years then did start rotting out...
Now without sides -and planting in the same soil- my crops grow just as well if not better. And I have more flexibility. If you have decent soil, or can improve what you have (compost, mulch, more compost, and more mulch), raised beds are over-rated. Some do find them more visually pleasing however.
My current beds are about 3.5 feet wide - I've had some that were 4', but that was just a wee bit too wide for me.
+1 for Gina.
If you start with decent garden soil, you can spend all of your energy and money amending it. Just mound it up.
In my neighborhood it seems as though no one is capable of just getting out a shovel, turning over dirt, and planting. It can be that simple. Instead they seem rudderless, and look to the Gateway Greening organization to guide them. That means they have to organize a groups to complete grant applications for lumber materials, have someone show them how to build the raised beds, buy the soil and compost from Gateway, etc. etc. good lord what a lot of hooey. But then I do live in a yuppified neighborhood where people, while capable of decorating to the standards of Martha Stewart Living cover shots, cannot do many practical things.l
About 1" below my grass is shelf rock. I live on the backside of a cliff over Taneycomo Lake. I have raised beds. Mine are wood framed and 3' wide x 8' long. I layed several layers of cardboard over the grass before filling in. In the early winter I lay a layer of newspaper on top and cover with leaves. I like my raised beds because they are so easy to weed. But I'm going to have to build a bit of fence around them this year because the chickens 'discovered' the garden last fall.
Our "soil" is rock, so we had to have raised beds. The poured concrete heats the bed up nicely. With our limited gardening season here it gives us a bit longer to grow. Also, as we get older, the raised beds are much easier to deal with as there are hardly any weeds and we don't have to crawl around on our hands and knees to plant.
Here in New England, we grow rocks. Since I'm lazy, and had no desire to excavate endless chunks, I had soil delivered, and just dumped it on top of existing grass, and then I formed raised beds out of it. The raised part is maybe 8-12" high depending on the bed. My garden is 28 x 42, so would be prohibitively expensive for me to do all those raised beds, plus as I said, I'm lazy. I'm happy with it.
Growing on rock here as well. I've got raised beds, about a foot high. Keep in mind that buying soil to fill raised beds gets Expensive. I'm thrilled to skip the $100 or so dirt expense per year now that I've finally got the beds going and great compost as well. One trick I've been using is to build a "compost bed", fill it with leaves/scraps, let it sit for six months with some manure added and then just put a bit of topsoil or sifted compost on the top to plant in. No need to fuss with moving the compost, just keep rotating the planting bed. Raised works for me because I can keep the compost contained and covered from the desert heat.
I don't know if you have deer or critters in your area like we do. The deer like the raised gardens because they don't need to bend down to eat. >:( So we purchased a garden scarecrow from the hardware store. It is actually a motion sensored sprinkler. We have ours on a timer and it goes on at 10 pm until 7 am. When anything moves within the scarecrow's range, a spray of water comes out. It works GREAT and I would HIGHLY recommend them. The deer would eat all our veggies and strawberries if we didn't have this. With it, the deer don't come near them! :)
We have fenced in the yard so we don't have to deal with larger critters too much. it's the small ones, skunks, opposum that we have to contend with.. .Thus the raised beds.
I would just mention that raised beds, while all the rage, aren't necessary if your've got decent garden soil. Evaulate your soil and perhaps you can save money and time.
As a person with lower back problems, I'm looking to be able to garden with a limited amount of bending. Being able to sit on the sides of my garden to weed is very appealing. I did have a ground garden for many years, we have rich soil, but found it difficult to maintain due to my limted mobility. I can hire a teen to come and turn soil and do amendments in the spring, but I want to maintain it afterwards on my own. I tried smaller container gardening but things dried out too quicky or didn't drain well enough. I will be having our handiman build and set up the beds for me.
simplelife2
1-17-11, 2:13pm
I've done the raised beds without the sides and has found it works quite well and eliminates a lot of expense as well as labor. What I like best is the since you never walk inside the beds, you don't need to till in the spring. Leaving the soil structure intact also is shown to promote higher yields. I also use a thick layer of newspapers and cover that with landscape cloth to maintain moisture and eliminate most of the weeding.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/1981-03-01/Chinese-Raised-Gardens.aspx
+1 on raised beds. I didn't know they were a rage; I've been using them since reading Peter Chan's (Better Gardening the Chinese Way) book back in the 80's--highly recommend that book if you can get it. It has beautiful photos. According to him, the soil is a bit warmer when it is raised and I believe it. Also the drainage is better, so good for those who have problems with that.
Our beds are wooden 1x4's, stacked two high, fastened with some kind of metal flashing bits DH found. I covered the ground AROUND the beds with plastic, because I hate weeding and don't own a tiller.
We have sideless raised beds and hope to add sides gradually. The thing about sideless beds is that the sides slope, and although the books say you can plant on the sloped sides, it's my experience that things just don't do well there, so your effective bed width is much less than the actual width.
Of course, if you want anything more than about 8" high, sides are what you need.
You asked about sun/shade: it depends on your climate. The hotter your climate, the more summer shade you can make use of, and vice versa.
flowerseverywhere
1-17-11, 6:51pm
I would try a variety of things but as said above raised beds can be expensive. The next town over from mine is called clay, so that gives you a clue as to my soil.
I would get three books from your library. Square foot gardening, Lasagna gardening and four season harvest. All will be filled with many ideas for a beginning gardener.
I have a variety of methods, some raised beds, some lasagna type gardens and some just stuck in the soil, but the drainage is not great. Also, I would find out about compost piles as they have helped me immensely.
edited to add don't use treated lumber- the chemicals can leech into the soil which can be bad
Thank you all so much for the information. It gave us a lot to think about.
My DH put in a raised bed (15'x4' and 18" tall) for me last fall and I love it! We have very poor soil here, so I can amend the raised bed without wasting the organic matter on the paths. It's also much easier to keep up with the weeding because I can just mow around it. I tried doing the raised beds without a border, but our soil is a powdery sand known as sugar sand and the first good rain flattened them all back out (and washed a good bit of the soil out of the garden). I'm a convert. We'll be putting in more beds for the spring garden.
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