Soil for a Raised Bed

When picking the soil for a raised bed you need to take a few things into considerations money, time, and effort.

If you have more money than the other two buying the soil is a great way to get your raised garden bed going quick. You can use bagged garden soil, top soil, even potting soil to fill your raised garden frame. You can bring it home yourself, or have it delivered by a nursery that offers a delivery service. It can be purchased by the bag or truckload depending on how large a garden you have planned.

If you have less money but more muscle you can create a compost pile. Adding compost to the native soil you already have is a great way to get good quality soil. Digging the compost in however does take some effort. Nothing like a shovel or garden fork to get you sweating, who needs an aerobics program when you have a garden? The more complete a job you do at mixing the better your garden will be.

If you have lots of time and do not need your garden to be ready right now, you can try an in place composting method called lasagna gardening. Simply put all the stuff that you would have put into a compost bin onto the garden plot itself and wait a year. You will be able to plant straight into the bed with very little work.

Most people have a combination of time, money, and effort to work with. None of the above options are strict. You can mix and match until you find the right combination for you. A few hours while the kids are in school and you can work on a compost pile, a few extra bucks when the tax return comes and you can buy a few bags of soil from the store, during summer vacation a little child labor never hurt a garden.

Just do what you can, when you can, and how you can until you have a good quality soil to work with. The better your soil the better your plants will be. If you are impatient like me the soil gets worked when it can be worked but the plants tend to go in way too early and then get moved too often.

Having patience when gardening will definitely save you a lot of time, money, and effort, if you do not have patience however it is not the end of the world. Nothing has to be perfect the first go around, just keep on and it will get there…somehow. If you are going to plant garden seed, make sure you have a good fine texture seedbed for the top inch or so.

Gardening is a learning process and if anyone claims they know everything just nod and smile. All plants are different and I do not know one person that knows all there is to know about each and every one. Your garden is also unique, there is no other garden that has exactly the same soil, temperature, microclimate, or sunlight so doing what “everyone does” may not work in your garden. Shade plants that need good drainage such as Hosta Sieboldiana Elegans will enjoy a raised bed.

Experiment in your garden to find out what seems to work best. If you screw up you can always redo some stuff. It is not the end of the world, believe me, I am an expert at leaping first and considering second. It is more fun that way but I will admit that I’ve had to untangle a few messes that I created. Untangling the messes is a learning process in itself, learning what does not work can help you figure out what might work.

Good luck making that soil for your raised bed, hope it turns out just like you want.

Raised Garden Vegetable Beds

There are many reasons to have raised garden vegetable beds bad soil, a body that doesn’t like getting up and down from the ground, they are attractive, and they are easier to weed.

If your interested in organic gardening you might want to check out my Organic Vegetable Soil post for some soil building tips.

Before getting crazy with the building of raised garden beds you need to find and check on the location where you are planning to put your vegetables garden. Your garden’s location is extremely important and not a step that is easy to undo and redo.

Vegetable gardens should be located near the kitchen door and not halfway across the lot. If you are going to maintain and manage a garden it needs to be convenient, or you might put off until tomorrow what you could be eating today, to misquote a phrase.

A raised garden vegetable bed is easy to maintain if you do not mind getting to it. Am I clear here? It should be close to the kitchen, convenient, not way out yonder.

The next item to check on with the location of the raised bed garden is how much sun the area gets. Head outside to your potential gardening spot every hour and see if it is getting direct sunlight. If the garden area is not getting direct sunlight it is not a good spot. You need at a minimum 5 hours of direct sun. You want more but sometimes we just can’t get more than the minimum. Look up, do you see trees up there? Trees above mean roots below which is competition for your vegetables. Trees are not allowed in our Raised Garden Vegetable Beds!!!

Soil is not so important in raised vegetable beds unless you are planning to use native soil to fill up your frame. If you are not using native soil you will be creating a mixture of your own or purchasing garden soil from a store.

The size of a raised garden is important, if you want to grow enough food to feed your family or just supplement your shopping trips you need to have a vegetable garden plan before you begin. Do a head count, a favorite vegetable count, and a hated vegetable count and start figuring out exactly what you are trying to accomplish with your raised bed or raised beds if you have a lot of people to feed.

Being able to get to your raised bed gardens is also important and I don’t mean being able to physically walk to the vegetable garden. I mean being able to weed every corner and the middle from whatever side you can get to. If it is the middle of the yard it can be much larger than if it is up against a fence. If you can’t weed it without walking on it you probably didn’t have the best raised garden bed plans that you could have. Ok back to the drawing board and start over.

The next few steps in raised gardens could be done in whatever order you want. Buying the additional garden soil and deciding the shape of the raised beds.

Another thing to think about before doing the vegetable garden planting is if you like flowers. If you want to plant flowers but do not want separated raised flower beds you can designate areas within the vegetable garden to have flowers planted. There is no reason you can’t mix and match your raised bed gardening style to suit all your needs.

Just because you are starting a vegetable garden does not mean all you can do is vegetable gardening. Flowers are great because they draw you out even when you do not need to harvest your food.

Time to stop reading and start planning so you can plant your raised garden vegetable beds.