5 Advantages of Raised Vegetable Garden Beds

Raised vegetable garden beds are an excellent choice for many people with a small backyard or garden. In this article we will look at the advantages of setting up raised vegetable beds as well as some of the materials that you can use to establish this style of gardening in your yard.

1. The biggest advantage of raised bed gardening for most people is that it is so much easier to maintain. Your beds are closer to eye level so you can see and eliminate weeds and pests so much more easily.  Because of this, you are likely to spot them and deal with them before they become a serious threat to your vegetables.

Raised vegetable beds for disabled access from wheelchairs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

2. The greater accessibility of the beds means less bending, so you can escape a lot of the physical discomfort of gardening. This is especially important for people with back problems or other physical difficulties but it makes gardening easier for everybody. You can even take a chair or stool to sit on while you garden. If the height of the beds and the pathways between them are designed correctly, it can also make the garden wheelchair-accessible both for visiting and for carrying out gardening tasks from a wheelchair.

3. Some pests are less likely to invade your beds if they are raised up from the ground, simply because it is harder for them to crawl up. This is especially true of slugs if you have brick-built beds, but you can also restrict access by putting deterrents for particular pests such as ants around the base of your beds. Vinegar can be a great deterrent for ants, but it could burn the leaves and roots of your plants if you didn't have raised beds.

4. When your garden is raised off the ground it is more visible from windows. The beds themselves can be attractive features and the plants are closer to eye level, so your garden can be even more pleasing to the eye.

5. Raised vegetable beds provide a more substantial and permanent alternative to container gardening for those who do not have bare earth in their yard. You can establish raised beds and fill them with earth to a greater depth than some containers will allow.

Raised bed garden with wood frames. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may even be able to establish a raised bed garden on a roof or large balcony, but be very careful not to overload it. Raised beds can be much heavier than containers and you would not want your roof or balcony to collapse under the weight!

Materials for raised beds include brick, wood or plastic. Plastic doesn't decompose as quickly as wood, but it can warp and crack over time, or bow outwards. Wood can look very attractive at first but it is not so long lasting. If you use treated wood that lasts longer, a small amount of chemicals may seep into your soil and possibly eventually into your vegetable crops, so it's really not a good idea for growing vegetables.  Even if you have a lining, which is recommended if you must use treated wood, this can tear or be damaged by pests over the years. If you use wood for edging your beds, be prepared to replace them every few years.

Brick is heavy, but is often a good solution because of its strength and relative permanence. Brick raised vegetable beds look very good and keep their attractive appearance for a long time.

Raised Bed Gardening Kits:
     

Creating Raised Beds In Your Organic Garden

Raised garden beds have a ton of advantages over traditional ground-level gardening. In addition, they can look very attractive and give a unique appearance to your garden. They suit any style of home, and can help keep your garden organized and well maintained. Let's look at some of the advantages and the practical steps to setting up raised garden beds in your organic garden.

High raised beds. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Raised garden beds allow you to design your garden however you want. If you have a difficult shape to your yard, poor soil or limited access, you can change everything by raising the beds. You may have back pain or other problems that prevent you from kneeling and bending to regular ground level beds. Even somebody in a wheelchair can work with raised garden beds, provided they are high enough and there are good paths to navigate the chair around them.

For an organic garden, raised beds have the added advantage of making it much easier for you to see weeds and pests and deal with them in a way that avoids using sprays. Indeed, some pests such as slugs are less likely to bother your raised bed plants because they won't climb all the way up there, especially if you have brick walls on your beds.

When you get to building raised garden beds, you will soon discover that brick or natural stone is the best material to use. Of course, wood is also possible, but it has several disadvantages.

Raised beds with wood edging. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the problems with wooden edging to your raised beds is that it is likely to deteriorate. You would need wood that had been treated with preservatives, which is not the best thing in an organic garden. Those chemicals will leak into your soil as the wood slowly breaks down. After a few years, it is likely to sag. Eventually it will not support the weight of the soil any more. Compare that with brick and stone, which can be used for retaining walls that last a hundred years or more, and you can see the advantages of using more solid materials.

It is important not to make your raised garden beds too wide. You will need to be able to reach the middle easily. This is especially important for beds that can only be accessed from one side. The main paths through the garden will need to be wide enough for a wheelbarrow or wheeled trug so that you can bring in heavy items and dispose of waste.

When you are building raised garden beds you have the choice of what type of soil you want to fill them with. You could use soil dug from your own yard or you could buy something else, or you can take the lasagna gardening route. Take into account the acidity of the soil as well as the clay/sand mix, because these will affect the plants that you can grow.

You can grow anything in raised garden beds that you would grow in regular ground level beds, but you are likely to want lower-growing plants so that you can get to the tops of them. Keep taller plants to the middle of your raised garden beds and toward the back of the garden.

Video - Building A No-Dig Garden Bed

Here is a short (2-minute) time-lapse video with instructions and demonstration of building a beautiful no-dig garden bed right on top of an old patch of lawn - no digging required! You can use other materials as well, but this video gives some examples of commonly used materials. You can substitute thick layers of newspaper for the cardboard, homemade compost for the manure, etc. No-dig gardening is great for new garden areas, and helps avoid some of the work usually required to make the soil habitable for your garden plants.

Check it out!

No dig garden construction
NB: The full video of the workshop that this video is based on can now be found here: www.youtube.com A quick video on the steps involved in constructing a no dig garden bed You do not have to follow the video specifically, you can use different mate...


Also a quick note - as the traditional growing season comes to an end, the gardens start to die down, and many gardeners hang up their trowels for the season, our blog becomes a bit quieter as well. This month we will be starting our winter schedule, so starting this week, we will only be posting twice a week through the colder months.

But do stay tuned! In the coming months we'll be sharing some great tips, articles, and resources, on everything from preparing your garden for the winter, to interesting tales and experiments in winter gardening (yes, I'm planning to attempt to grow throughout the winter in Ohio this year - I'll keep you posted on my results!), and of course, planning for the spring planting season - so don't go away! We're still here Tuesdays and Thursdays, bringing you organic and sustainable gardening news you can use.