Tips For Separating, Seeding And Growing In The Middle Of A Raised Garden Bed

You have built a raised garden bed or upgraded your old items to a perfect vegetable garden. Now comes the interesting part: fill it - and of course enjoy the harvest later in the season.

One of the benefits of gardening on a raised garden bed is that you can reach out to plant and weed. You are not walking around the garden, compacting the soil. This means that your garden soil is still good, loose and fragile.

Choose the best soil you can afford to fill your raised garden bed. I ordered a truck of high-quality triple mixture for vegetables. At that time, I built all the raised garden beds. You can also mix your own special soil to grow vegetables.

I used about two inches of organic compost to dress up all the filled raised garden beds. When I pull out some spring crops, I will also re-add compost to my raised garden bed in the season to re-add nutrients to the soil.

Planting raised garden bed vegetable garden

Before you dig, pay attention to which direction the sun comes from - you don't want your higher plants to block anything behind them. I used to plant daisies in front of the raised garden bed without looking at the seed bag. The flowers grow to about three to four feet high! They are obviously not a good variety of low hills. You should make sure that the hot fruits and vegetables you grow - tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, etc. - have at least six to eight hours of sunshine every day (preferably close to eight hours).

Whether you are planting seeds or seedlings, please read the seed package or plant label carefully so that you can understand what conditions the plant needs to thrive. For example, when planting rhizome vegetables, once the bean sprouts begin to penetrate the soil, you need to follow the thinning instructions. Although it looks wasteful when you pull them out, beet sprouts, for example, can be saved and thrown into salads. On the other hand, carrot seedlings should be buried, as explained in this article about evacuating carrots. Thin beets, carrots, radishes, radishes and other root vegetables will promote healthy root growth and larger vegetables.

For some plants, such as tomatoes, you want to give them enough space so that the air can circulate between the plants. This helps prevent disease. You also want light to reach plants and fruits. However, you don't want to keep tomatoes too far away, which may spread weeds. For other eggplant vegetables, such as pepper, eggplant and tomato, please remember these tips

Make sure to make a regular watering schedule so that you won't forget to water the tender seedlings. The cover plate or row cover can be used to protect them from the frost in late spring.

Why should we plant intensively on the raised garden bed?

Intensive planting is a technology to reduce weeds in the garden and find open space for growth. Planting seedlings closer means that the plants themselves act as living mulch on the soil to keep cool and reduce evaporation.

Successive planting of raised garden bed

This leads to succession planting. If you are pulling out spring crops, such as peas and root vegetables, or harvesting garlic in summer, there is no reason why you cannot add more vegetables in this blank. You may want to give seeds a good start under your growth lamp. When planting, please remember the composting tips: modify the soil to add some nutrients and encourage harvest. Good soil health is the key to garden prosperity.

Add plant supports so that you have space to accommodate more plants

When planting raised garden beds, be sure to give some of your plants something to climb - a shed frame, an old lattice, a cow board, etc. If you have ever planted pumpkin seedlings on a raised garden bed, you will know that with its growth, plants will occupy more than half of the total, if not the whole garden! Adding vertical structures will support climbers such as cucumbers, pumpkins, beans, peas and melons.

Planting a mixture of vegetables and flowers on a raised garden bed

Planting food in your ornamental garden has a lot of mutual benefits, The reverse is also true (in smart gardening, we call it # gardenbffs! I like to plant flowers on my raised garden bed, such as centaurea, golden lotus and persimmon. They attract pollinators, who in turn will pollinate my tomato flowers, pumpkin flowers and cucumber flowers (This is a win-win situation! Usually, when I am in the garden in summer, hummingbirds fly around me, looking to land on my centennial chrysanthemum. Variety several flowers, so that you can leave some flowers for the pollinator, cut the rest, put the summer bouquet together, and make a vase.

When planting raised garden beds, you can also use flowers as natural pest control. Some of my planting is based on the pests that invaded my garden in the previous seasons, while others are used as preventive measures.

Here are some examples:

• Alyssum attracts parasitic bees, which take care of a large number of bad insects, such as cabbage worm, cucumber beetle, pumpkin stem borer, tomato hornworm, black silkworm, gypsy moth caterpillar, etc.
• Achyranthes bidentata attracts the bedbug, which feeds on the larvae of Colorado potato beetles - a kind of killer that likes to cause serious damage to my tomatoes.
• Marigold is planted to drive out nematodes under the soil. I also read a recent study that said that they can drive off the whitefly of tomato plants.
• If you don't mind sacrificing some, the golden lotus can be used as a trap crop for aphids