Friday, March 03, 2006

Raised Garden Beds

I have been asked about raised bed gardening so will give you our version. Our soil is pretty sandy and great for growing watermelon and cantaloupes but not too good for other things. Plus I HATE hoeing the garden. I love digging in the dirt or even pulling weeds but hate to hoe. With a raised bed you don't hoe and if you do it right you have little or no weeds. We are building ours out of slabs we got from a sawmill. You can get them free or very very cheap. You can also make them out of scrap lumber, cement blocks , old tires or just use your imagination. The first 2 I built only had to be 3 sided as I used the flower bed wall and porch for the other side. I only made mine as high as the slab was wide but am going to make some that are 2 slabs high for the deeper rooted plants. You can nail them together or put stakes in the ground, put the slab against the stakes and then put stakes on other side of slab as tightly as you can. I then put plastic down before filling bed with topsoil,manure and mulch. You can do your own mixture for filling the bed. Usually our front yard has trees and flowers but this year I am placing my raised beds around and mixing flowers, vegs, blueberry bushes, strawberries etc. I am trying to choose colorful veg plants. For example I found a beautiful pole bean that has bright red flowers on it so I am making a tepee out of poles for the beans to climb and I can enjoy the flowers while waiting on my beans. I have purchased okra that grows Burgundy and turns green when cooked. Anyhow you get my point ... To have a pretty and useful garden. Another good thing about raised beds if you decide to move one or not have it next year they are easy to take down or move. Hope this helps somewhat and if there's something you want to know I will be happy to try and answer or give you a friend that can.
This is a picture of my onion bed and at the top of the photo is where I set out some cabbage plants.
I have cabbage plants around the edges to leave room for other things in the center
Just had to show that my onion buttons are starting to pop up!

3 comments:

DonnaB said...

Thanks for telling us how to accomplish raised beds!

Leslie said...

Peggy,
Using slab wood is a good idea. How long do the slabs last before they have to be replaced, do you know yet?

Does the plastic go inside the walls only (and the bottom is open)? I'm thinking the purpose of the plastic is to help the slab last longer, is that correct?

Wonderful post, thanks for doing it.

Leann said...

We love our raised bed so much we are adding two more this year! Thanks for all the tips and info...