A Raised Bed Vegetable Garden Is Easy To BuildA raised bed vegetable garden is a great way to grow vegetables. This system of vegetable gardening has many benefits. Better drainage, easier maintenance, more fertile soil, an earlier start during the spring planting season, etc. are all great reasons to try this method. As the resident garden gnome of an avid human gardener, I like it that my homeowner (the old guy who lives in the house in front of our garden) built and uses raised beds. It leaves more room below in the soil for me and the rest of my gnome family and friends! You can go about building the beds several different ways. Here are the most common variations. Wooden Frames Or BoxesIf you’re handy with a hammer and a screwdriver, making a raised bed vegetable garden of wood is a pretty easy project. You will need a few supplies.
Before you make your box, measure out the area you plan to cover, and prepare and amend the soil down to a depth of 6 to 8 inches if possible. Then, build the box on top. Because the bed is above the natural soil line, you will want to get a delivery of compost or compost/topsoil mix, along with a few bags of vermiculite that you can mix with your existing soil, or use one of my other garden soil recipes . Fill the box level to the top. Banking Up Soil Into BedsThis method is similar to the wooden box method, only instead of edging the beds with boards, you simply bank up the beds on the sides-in effect, creating little hills. Some people like to trench-edge around their banked up beds so that if any soil washes down, instead of washing away, it washes into the trench and can be re-collected. It is always good to have the bed slightly angled toward the southern exposure in the garden so that it gets good light.Artistic BordersYou can edge your raised bed vegetable garden with just about anything you have in enough quantity. To make an artistic garden, collect bottles, old china plates, old bricks or any other material that is relatively solid and does not break down quickly. Line the entire garden plot with your finds and you will be all set! Plus, your garden will be a work of art. A less artistic border that is just as effective as wood boards is one made of cement blocks.Plastic KitsAt several online gardening stores, you can actually buy kits that allow you to make raised garden beds that are similar to wood frames. These are usually various pieces of interlocking plastic that will form a frame into which you can add your new soil mix and plant.Other online stores sell bracket only kits, and you supply lumber. These make construction a snap. For Patio Gardens or on Top of Existing GrassIf you prefer not to dig up your yard in order to create a garden, you can lay down a piece of weed fabric and completely create a raised garden on top of the fabric. Better than weed fabric, though, is a layer of several sheet of newspaper overlapped. The newsprint will kill weed or grass, and then decompose, allowing plant roots to penetrate into the soil below.Raised bed vegetable gardens take quite a bit of soil brought in from another source, because you will want to build the soil up to at least 8 to 12 inches on top of the weed fabric or newspaper. You can build your border out of wood, bricks, cement blocks - anything tall enough to contain the soil. As long as the bed is at least 8 to 12 inches deep, you can even build it on top of asphalt drive or a concrete slab. The old guy up front even built a box out of 2”x10”s with a plywood bottom. He put it up on concrete blocks so it is about 3 feet tall. He built it for his father to garden in (grandpa can’t bend over at all). Seems to work well, but we are way too short to get a good look. Raised bed vegetable gardens make gardening easier for all gardeners. If you have trouble getting on your hands and knees, this system of gardening makes it possible to keep your hands in the dirt. Happy gardening, Geefrank
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