Starting A Raised Garden

A long raised bed with a trellis sits against a sun warmed wall and holds heat loving and vining crops.

Starting a raised garden.

The square foot method in which you subdivide a raised 4x4 foot garden bed into 1 foot squares using a physical grid such as lattice strips is a specialized version of intensive cropping. You ll need 8 cubic feet of top quality garden soil to fill such a bed with 6 inch high sides. Each 4 by 4 ft. Drainage in a raised bed is superior to that in an in ground garden bed.

Specialized covers and garden fabric help you get started even earlier. Raised beds take very little space and can be built right over a concrete patio if lined properly. Using an edger or spade mark the ground around the perimeter of the frame. A 12 deep bed provides ample room for most vegetable roots.

A raised bed garden is a garden built on top of your native soil sometimes incorporating native soil sometimes not. With a raised bed you start fresh with the ideal soil blend even if the soil on your site is poor. You have to pick a place with proper sunlight for the plants which will be the first step in starting a raised bed garden in your backyard. Move the raised garden bed frame to the sunny spot you ve picked out for the bed.

Step 6 prepare the soil photo by ask this old house tv. Garden small square planter boxes contain low growing edibles. Find the right place. Using a sod cutter or grub hoe skim away the grass layer.

A typical 4 4 raised garden bed has room for 16 square feet of growing space and any square foot gardening guide is a great starting place for a beginning gardener. Here are my spring square foot garden plans for our four raised beds from a few years ago. If you are wondering how to start a raised bed garden in your backyard you have to know how to pick the right place. Box can accommodate 5 or 6 low growers.

However raised beds do not require a constructed frame to be effective. In this 10 by 60 ft. Raised gardens make in possible to grow flowers and vegetables in nearly any area that has sufficient light. These gardens can be contained such as when you build a wood or stone structure to keep the bed intact or they can be more free form with soil and amendments merely piled several inches high.

A productive vegetable garden depends on good soil. Excess water drains better and soil warms up faster in spring compared to in ground beds.