The Meaning of Raised Garden Bed
Raised garden beds are a good idea for family gardeners. This investment will have superior growth conditions, higher convenience and greater chances of success.
Benefits of Raised Garden Bed
Gardening is a great way to beautify your property and avoid lawn maintenance. This is a great hobby and good source of moderate physical exercise, allowing you to experience outdoor activities at the same time. Gardens also provide plant diversity for any pollinator that may live in your neighborhood, such as bees and butterflies. They have been looking for the source of pollen and nectar, which is definitely provided by a garden.
Flowers grown in the garden look lovely when they grow underground, but they can also be cut, brought in and placed in vases to light any room. Or, a bunch of cut flowers from the garden can be a good gift for a friend. If you choose to plant fruits and vegetables in your garden instead of just flowers, you will provide yourself and your family with the freshest source of agricultural products, which is good for your health and saves money. Any fruit or vegetable you grow, such as green beans, can be eaten fresh, or you can freeze or canned. Rich agricultural products can also be shared with neighbors. There are so many advantages of keeping a family garden that it's hard to enumerate them!
As mentioned above, the raised garden bed allows you to enjoy all the benefits of gardening, while also providing additional benefits that you may not have considered before. This is a unique form, between traditional gardens directly planted underground and many smaller ones planted in flowerpots or other kinds of containers. For the perfect approach in the middle, consider building a raised garden bed.
Here are some advantages of a raised garden bed:
Control soil quality: You can control the soil quality of the raised garden bed. As your own builder and designer of raised garden beds, you will choose the type of soil you want. This means that you do not need to rely on the following soil types that naturally exist in your area and may be more acidic or alkaline than you like.
Improved drainage: Certain types of plants require certain types of soil drainage. This is related to the root system around them. With a raised garden bed, you can improve the drainage of plants.
Easier access to your factory: Raised garden beds are higher than traditional gardens, making it easier for plants to reach. Save your back and knees by building a raised garden bed and lift the plants to your side. Planting and weeding will be easier if you don't have to stoop so far.
Raised garden beds allow you to control soil quality and help improve drainage, while helping to protect the environment and keep you from many bends. These attributes make the raised garden bed an excellent choice for gardeners.
Is a raised garden bed suitable for you?
Raised garden beds are a popular way to grow flowers, fruits and vegetables, although the exact size, location and other logistics have been studied and considered. Therefore, even if the raised garden looks easy, it needs more planning and more materials. Compared with traditional gardens, plants grow directly underground.
First of all, in order to make full use of the raised garden bed, it is important to choose a suitable location in your property for landscaping and your garden plan. Choosing the right position for your raised garden bed is key.
Choose a location that suits you: Planting vegetables near the kitchen - essentially creating what is sometimes called a kitchen garden - ensures that you incorporate any agricultural products you grow into your cooking and daily diet. This is a great way to make sure you and your family are getting fresh fruits and vegetables. Another idea is to place the raised garden bed close to the house so that you can walk through it often. This will make it easier to weed regularly and ensure the success of the garden. This also means that it will be easier to bring any gains. You should also pay attention to the location of outdoor water sources in the yard. Where is the tap? Or do you have a rain bucket? Either way, you want to make sure your raised garden bed is easily accessible to hoses, soaking hoses or sprinklers for regular watering during hot and dry periods.
Choose a location suitable for your plants: which part of your yard has the most sunshine? In which direction does the rain flow to your lawn? Will it gather anywhere after a particularly heavy rain? Are there branches hanging from any particular part of your property? Note that trees not only block the sun from the garden, they also drop debris. Leaves, branches, acorns and other natural debris will fall on your garden if the garden is under the branches. Pine trees, in particular, can make the soil more acidic when they shed pine needles.
When you find a home for a raised garden bed, the next part is to consider the scope of the project and how you want the garden to fit into your life. How many raised garden beds are suitable for you? Do you want to start from one? Or are you happy to have a lot of work to do right away? Think about what yield you want from your crops, the number of different crops you want, and the time you have to work in the garden. Obviously, more gardens means more plants, so more fruits, vegetables and flowers, but it also means more labor.
Organizationally, you may want to group the crops you are planning according to their type or sun and water needs. For example, if you have a raised garden bed that can receive enough sunlight, you will want to plan to put plants there and like the full sun. Or, if you are planning to plant plants that like gravel soil, you need to put all these types together, because you can plan to put gravel soil on that bed. Or maybe you want flowers on a raised garden bed, blueberry bushes on another garden bed, and vegetables on another garden bed. The possibilities are endless. I hope you can have fun dreaming about all the different types of gardens you can have!
You may like to visit trusted sources on the Internet or consult books or magazines for gardeners. Or better yet, seek advice from people in your local garden center or community garden. Gardeners can use various methods and practices to guide them, such as inheritance planting or partner planting.
Important logistics of raised garden bed
When considering providing a raised garden bed for your property, dreaming big is great; The combination of bed and plant is infinite. However, specific factors need to be considered.
Size: You should keep the raised garden bed no more than four feet wide. This is because if they are too wide, you will not be able to reach the middle plant. For example, if your raised garden bed is six feet wide and six feet long, you will not be able to reach the middle of the bed for weeding and pruning, and even watering may be an extension. If this is the case, you will eventually step into your raised garden bed, which may damage the bed structure and also compact the soil. Compacted soil is poorly drained and difficult to plant. Therefore, this is why it is a good rule of thumb to keep the width of a raised garden bed no more than four feet wide. The idea is that when you enter the garden bed from both sides, you don't need to put your hands more than two feet into the bed to reach the middle. However, if your raised garden bed is flush with a fence or wall, you need to make it narrower. Two feet wide would be ideal for this instance - up to three feet wide. Take a test, kneel down, stretch out your hand, and measure how far you can stretch forward comfortably. Remember that your garden bed will be lifted off the ground.
Spacing: You also want to ensure that there is enough space around each bed to handle bags of soil, organic trolley material, and watering cans or hoses. Therefore, it is recommended that you leave at least three feet between each raised garden bed. This means that there should be at least three feet of space between the different beds and between the bed and any other obstacles that may exist in the yard, such as fences or swing sets or walls.
Compared with DIY, there are several things to consider when considering whether to buy a raised garden bed made by others or decide to do it yourself. What is your budget for this project? Do you like to use building materials? Do you have the supplies and tools you need to complete the raised garden bed? What delivery options are available to complete the design or necessary materials? Does your raised garden bed need an unusual size or shape to fit your yard well? No matter which way you choose, you should consider the service life of the materials involved; You want to choose something that can stand the elements and doesn't need to be changed quickly. Metal, concrete blocks or treated wood are popular choices.
Preparation: Even if your existing site has been planted, you still need to plan to remove and replace the old soil in your raised garden area throughout the process. This is probably the most practical part of the project. Any grass or other growth shall be removed from the bottom layer and the soil before it is raised shall be placed on the top. Then, consider adding a weed barrier between the ground and the soil, and you will add it to your raised garden bed. You can buy weed barrier landscape fabrics, or you can use recycled materials, such as cardboard or newspapers.
Potential pests: When you plant a garden, you can count on animals to visit. Some are helpful, such as bees and ladybirds, but some are pests that will eat and damage your plants. The best advice is to pay close attention to your raised garden bed so that you can know as soon as possible if you have pest problems. There may be invasive insect species, such as aphids, or birds may peck your berries or rabbits may come to eat your lettuce. Regardless of the situation, carefully evaluate the damage and consider placing a fence around the raised garden bed. Ensure that some fences are buried underground to prevent burrowing pests such as moles. The fence should also be high enough to prevent taller animals, such as deer. A net can be set up for birds. If you find yourself dealing with garden pests that you do not know, or if you encounter problems that you do not know how to solve, search for solutions online, or ask your local horticultural center for help.
Raised garden beds are a perfect complement to any property. The return on you and the environment will be greater than the cost of setting up in your garden. The season of homegrown flowers, fruits and vegetables awaits you!