BHG005 – Raised Beds; The Best Growing Environment for a Productive Garden

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This week, we focus on raise beds; how to make them properly and why they work so well for creating the ideal growing conditions for your plants to thrive. Given the option, I can’t imagine not gardening in raised beds. They provide the best growing environment for plant roots to thrive by creating essential elements for success below ground, namely, good soil structure and drainage.

Show Notes: BHG005 – Gardening in Raised Beds; The Best Growing Environment for a Productive Garden

In last week’s podcast, we talked about why compost is so important for your garden, and how to make it yourself. So it’s only fitting that this week, we talk about where to put it, and for me, there’s no better place than raised beds.

Given the option, I can’t imagine not gardening in raised beds. They provide the best growing environment for plant roots to thrive by creating essential elements for success below ground, namely, good soil structure and drainage. With raised beds, soil can be brought into the garden and mounded up in rows or added to a framed structure no matter what the condition of your existing soil.  The goal is to create a deep wide growing area that encourages roots to grow down and out. And you do that by adding plenty of organic material such as well-aged manure and compost, along with a generous dose of quality topsoil.

And before we get too deep into this podcast, how about a definition of a raised bed; well for me, it’s simply mounded soil or a contained bed of soil above the surrounding grade. Does it have to be contained by some sort of physical barrier? No not at all. In fact, I know a lot of gardeners that mound up the soil a good six inches or more, and simply angle the sides to reduce erosion. It’s easy to do and it’s certainly less expensive. It also makes your garden more flexible if you decide to change the layout next season, in which case you just knock down the soil and start over.

On the flip, I like having raised beds with actual physical barriers to define the planting area and contain all the soil. And just as important for me, I love the look, and knowing that I have a semi-permanent area to hold the soil and grow my plants as my garden evolves through the seasons. Yes… it’s more work up front to build and layout your beds, but it’s a lot less work after that, since you never have to go back and reconfigure or redefine your bed lines.

So whatever way you decide to make your raised beds, how big should they be? Let’s start with depth: I like really deep beds, 12 or even 18” if possible and it’s really hard to do that unless you have some way to contain the soil. But don’t worry, you don’t need them to be that high but try to shoot for at least 6 inches. The most important point of deep beds is to create ideal conditions for roots to grow as deeply as they want. And the deeper the roots can go, the more drought tolerant and vigorous the top growth.

As for the dimensions on length and width, that’s up to you. In fact, I don’t think the length of the bed matters at all. It’s more about how big do you want your garden and how much space you have.

But here’s what is important; the width. You never want your raised bed to be wider than your ability to reach into the center of the bed. That’s because you don’t want to have to step into the bed, and compact your soil. I find that the ideal width is four feet. It gives me easy reach into the center from both sides, and it’s wide enough to allow lots of planting options.

Options to Contain the Soil

OK, so now that I’ve hopefully sold you on the benefits of raised beds, if you decide you want to have physical boarders, the choices of what to use to construct it are many. Traditional options include treated lumber, non treated, weather resistant wood such as cedar or redwood, recycled composite material, usually made up of plastic and wood fibers, stone, concrete blocks, logs, etc.  You get the idea; it really comes down to personal preference, budget or simply, what’s available. But here’s one caveat about treated wood, although it’s readily available and inexpensive, you might want to avoid this option, especially if you’re an organic gardener or if you’re growing food in these beds since it’s possible for chemicals used in treated lumber can leech into the soil.

So there you have it. Providing a growing environment with great soil and drainage is a sure way to get your Burpee Home Garden plants off to the best start. And raised beds are a great way to make that possible.

This is just one of 26 podcasts created to get you off to a successful start and provide helpful, weekly tips throughout the entire growing season for your Burpee Home Garden plants to thrive. And if you don’t want to miss any episodes, you can subscribe to this podcast series for free in iTunes. And for more ideas and inspiration any time be sure to check out burpeehomegardens.com

Thanks for listening everybody. We’ll be right back here next week for another Burpee Home Gardens Tip of the Week.

Now go get dirty!

Joe Lamp’l