Why Raised Garden Beds?

As I said in my first post, I have always dreamed of having my own, lush garden. Unfortunately, my backyard just wouldn't permit it. I thought I was out of luck until I read about raised garden beds. When I found out that I could basically put one anywhere, I knew I had to have one!

There are many benefits to having raised garden beds: They can be placed in different locations, you can plant closer together, they create warmth, they can also be decorative... just to name a few!

When I was doing my research, I came across several different websites that I found useful. For those of you who are contemplating taking this step, here is one from a website called Raised-Garden-Beds (They sell beautiful garden bed kits)


The many advantages of raised bed gardening

First, there are advantages for your garden:

• Perhaps the most important advantage is greatly reduced soil compaction. Plant roots need air. In an ordinary garden, you can’t avoid stepping in the garden bed occasionally when doing your everyday gardening. A properly designed raised bed garden allows you to do all your gardening from the garden path.
• Plants can be spaced a little closer together in a raised bed because you don’t need places to step. This increases productivity per square foot of bed and reduces weeding when the plants begin to mature. Note: Avoid the temptation to crowd your plants. You will still want to use generous plant spacing because your plants will grow much larger in raised beds.
• Raised beds tend to drain away excess moisture better than ordinary garden beds. This is another advantage that helps the plant roots to breath. In areas that have saturated soil like Florida and many areas of the South, raised beds may be the only way you can grow many types of plants.
• Soil conditions and types can be controlled more efficiently in a raised bed and they can be varied easily from bed to bed. Raised beds are the answer when topsoil is thin.
• Water, fertilizer, compost, mulch, etc. can be applied more carefully because they only need to be applied to the garden beds.
• Various studies have shown that raised garden beds produce 1.4 to 2 times as much vegetables and flowers per square foot as ordinary beds, due mainly to the above advantages. You can have a smaller and more manageable garden that produces more goodies for your table.

Then, there are advantages for you:

• Raised garden beds bring your garden closer to you. Raised beds are after all, raised!
• Raised beds tend to bring more order and pleasing geometry to your garden, especially when forms or edging are used to define them.
• Raised beds can extend your gardening season. They tend to warm up a little sooner in the spring and remain productive later in the fall.
• Do your gardening from the comfort of the garden path. No more bending over to pull weeds or trim plants. Sit on a stool or put a seat board on your garden wagon!

OK. What are the problems?

• There are problems with most raised bed systems if you want to disassemble your raised beds to move or rearrange your garden or if you just want to roto-till your garden beds.
• If you’ve framed your raised beds with railroad ties, timbers or landscape blocks, disassembly and reassembly is really a lot of hard work.

My back aches just thinking about that.

• If you’ve framed your raised beds with nice wood bed boxes:
• You can try to pry the assembled bed boxes out of the soil. However, the small wood screws that most makers use to attach the form boards to the corner posts might pull out and the boxes could require major repairs. or...
• You can disassemble the bed boxes. However, on most bed boxes, the screws that hold them together are on the inside and are buried, fouled with soil and probably corroded.

Ahh! But with raised-garden-beds.com raised garden beds, the heavy-duty lag screws are on the outside, where you can get at them. You can easily pull the lag screws on two opposite corners and the bed box halves can be lifted out of the garden.

Here is their link if you would like to check out their beds!
http://www.raised-garden-beds.com/index.htm#Advantages


If you are looking to garden in more cooler climates, the garden beds are great for that as well!

"One of the best ways to grow vegetables in cool climates is to plant them on raised beds. When the soil is elevated it dries more quickly, warms faster and provides deeper soil for the root crops to develop. You can plant earlier in the season and harvest later into the fall. " -- Humeseeds.com

If you have a raised garden bed, please fell free to tell us (in the comments section) about the benefits you found!