Growing Your Own Vegetables In Raised Garden Beds

How Deep To Build Your Raised Garden Beds

There isn’t a simple answer for this. It depends. If you goal is plant shallow plants like potatoes, carrots, and other root vegetables than a 2 feet deep would be sufficient. When it comes to most vegetables, plants love deep roots. It really does impact how well they develop. I’ll cover that experience in more detain in the next paragraph. In general, you should have roots that are as deep as the plant is tall. If a tomato plant is going to be 3-4 feet tall, you’ll want a container close to that. Most vegetables don’t need more than 3-4 feet of soil depth.

Choosing The Right Material To Build Your Raised Garden Beds

There are a ton of materials you can use to get started building your garden. Almost anything can work, the biggest concern is to make sure none of the material leaches chemicals into your soil. I personally wouldn’t use stuff like pressure treated lumber. Outside of that, your imagination is your only limit.

Wood: Logs, untreated lumber, slabs cut from logs, and even old crates can be used. A good solution could also be old oak barrels.

Metal: This is probably the least desirable method if the container isn’t large enough. Small metal containers can heat up the soil too much and kill you plants. If the container is large enough, they can be great choices. In fact, there are a lot of options here. Feed stores and stores like that will have feed and watering troughs. Steel corrugated culvert pipe is a really cool option.

Concrete: You could make concrete panels to build a raised garden bed or build a frame and pour concrete to create a box. Concrete is incredibly durable and will last nearly forever. You can make any size box you want. Concrete blocks can also be used. There readily available at any home improvement store and usually cost less than a couple dollars for each block.

Plastic: When it comes to plastic, there are a lot of options as well. 50 gallon plastic drums can be bought, but if you are buying them used, make you are buying food grade drums. There are also a variety of large plastic container used in the food industry. Large plastic containers, called IBC totes, can be found by looking on the internet or visiting a food distributor. Again, make sure you are getting food grade totes. Finally, you have a variety of plastic corrugated pipe similar to the steel versions.
Whatever material you decide you use, a raised garden is a great way grow a garden without having to amend the soil on your property.

5 Tips To Making A Successful And Abundant Raised Garden Bed

You need to insure your plants have enough depth to grow strong roots. The requires about 3 feet on average for most vegetables. Healthy roots are super important to growing healthy plants.
Proper watering is crucial as well. If you add too much water, your roots will rot. If you add to little water, you foliage will wilt. Stressing your plants with either will affect your plants health and their ability to produce high quality fruit. As a general rule of thumb, it is better to water too little than to water too much. I tend to water my plants a little every other day when it’s hot out. Once every three days when it’s just warm. Then once a week, I will do a deep soak. This is important for a couple reasons. The first is it gives your plants a deep drink of water. The second is, it will help flush out any build up if you are prone to using too much fertilizer.
Watch the leaves on your plants. They will tell you a lot about what is going on with the plant. If the leaves are turning yellow, this could be a sign of nutrients lock (like a lack of magnesium) or a lack of nitrates. We have an article that goes into detail on this and other plant health issues. You can find that here.
Poor drainage will kill a plant fast. It will rot the roots and once the roots die, the plant isn’t worth saving in most cases. If you are using the hugelkultur method, the wood logs will help and since you are growing in raised beds, there’s a good chance you’ll have plenty of drainage. With that said, you should be aware of the soil that your beds are built on. If it is mostly clay, it act as a natural sealer and prevent water from draining properly. If this is the case, you might want to mix in sand with the clay and/or place drain pipes under your beds. Whatever you do, make sure the water is draining effectively.
Keep bugs off your plants. I don’t mean bees or beneficial bugs. I mean white flies, fruit flies, mites, and other harmful bugs. If you find bugs on your leafs, you can often help get rid of them by using Dawn dish soap and water. This isn’t 100% successful, but it will knock them down. I will spend time wiping off leaves and removing leaves that have too much damage. It is better to cut your plant back and let it grow back healthy leaves. Be aggressive. Bugs are the nemesis of most gardeners. You can also introduce good bugs. I don’t find they do much because they tend to fly away, but a few may stick around and kill bugs for you. Lady bugs and special wasps will kill (eat) the aphids and other bugs on your plants.

Should You Line Your Raised Garden Bed

In most cases no. In fact, I can’t think of any reason to actually line your beds. It may make sense to put a plastic sheeting down on top of the soil to hold in water and moisture if you live in a super arid environment, but even then, you are probably better off adding some wood chips or other mulch to the top of your soil. The organic mulch will help promote worms and retain moisture as well.

Enriching The Soil For Your Raised Garden Using Hugelkultur

This concept involves putting wood logs at the bottom of your container. You can also use wood chips, bark, and branches Once you’ve done this, fill your container with quality top soil, some sand, and compost. This will give you and amazing base to grow your vegetables from. Over time, the wood will deteriorate and add more microbes to your soil. In addition, as the wood breaks down it will add heat to the soil and help keep the plants roots nice and warm.

Compost Tea: Another great way to add awesome stuff to your beds is by creating a compost tea. Although there are a bunch of recipes for making compost tea, at it’s most basic it is essentially water and compost. You can add worm castings, feather meal, manure, and other organic material to the mix. By placing all the contents into a cloth bag, you can set that bag into a barrel of water and let it seep (just like a good tea). It’s a good idea to add a small aerator. You can pick these up at Wal-Mart or any other store that sells aquarium supplies. They’re usually only $20 or so and it will add air to keeps the water from becoming stagnant and allows all the good microbes to breed. This stuff is liquid gold.