Welcome to my Raised Bed Garden Round Up! I have always gardened using raised beds; and I think the pros outweigh any cons with this kind of garden. Whether you’re just getting started with a raised bed garden or just looking for some tips, this is the post for you! Some of my homesteading friends have given me permission to share their BEST tips on gardening with raised beds.
Last year I wrote about the benefits of a raised bed garden:
- Easy to start
- Almost no weeding
- Customizable
- Higher quality soil
- Better pest control
- Easy to match to your decor
- Bigger yields in a smaller space
- Adaptability – grow anywhere!
- Containment
- Water conservation
You can read the full article here – Raised Garden Bed Garden Benefits.
Raised Bed Garden Round-Up
Square Foot Gardening: Growing Big in Small Spaces with Survival at Home – Getting Started with Square Foot Gardening The first thing to consider is where you’ll put your square foot gardens. Pick an open spot that gets enough sun for the plants you intent to put in. Typically an area with 8 hours or more of sun is ideal. Then you need to actually build your boxes.
DIY Raised Garden Beds for Under $30 with The Cape Coop – Starting a raised bed garden can be an expensive prospect. You can
buy a ready made kit, many of them topping out well over $100 per bed. I make my own raised beds, read on to see how you can make a raised garden bed for under $30! It’s easy and doesn’t require any special equipment aside from a screwdriver and a saw.
Why Use Raised Beds Instead of Planting in the Ground with Small Town Homestead – Why Use Raised Beds Instead Of Planting In The Ground? This is a question I received from a reader recently after I posted a picture of the raised beds I was building on Facebook. He wanted to know “why would you go through all the trouble of building raised beds instead of just planting your garden directly in the ground? What are the benefits of raised beds?” So I thought I would share my answer to him with everyone because maybe others are wondering the same thing.
Beginner’s Guide to Square Foot Gardening with The Cape Coop – Do you want to start a garden but are overwhelmed about how to start? Let me tell you about a system I have been using for the past few seasons called square foot gardening. I think this is a great way to garden for someone that is just getting started (or someone that has been doing it forever!). It’s high yield in a small, easy to care for plot.
Square Foot Garden: A Quick & Easy Way to Begin a Garden with Grow a Good Life – The first year wasn’t stellar. The garden beds were infested with weeds, the soil was in poor shape, and I quickly discovered that I didn’t have enough time to weed and hoe each day. The good news was that even with the challenges I was able to harvest enough veggies to feed the two of us. I was optimistic by what I could grow and I knew I could get more yields for my efforts if my veggies didn’t have to battle the weeds for water and nutrients. I had to do something different.
Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening with Survival at Home – More pros and cons of using the raised garden bed method.
DIY Metal Raised Beds with Idlewild Alaska – Over the years, I’ve seen quite a few different kind of raised beds built in greenhouses; plywood boxes, treated lumber boxes, even old bathtubs covered in wood. With each, I had a few issues. Plywood will eventually rot and fall apart. I don’t like the idea of whatever they used to treat the lumber so it won’t rot leaching into my dirt and plants. Bathtubs take up a lot of extra space around the edges, space I want to fill with plants.
How to Build a Square Foot Garden with Grow a Good Life – Building a square foot garden is a quick and easy way to begin or expand your garden. The method is also simple to understand, organized, and makes it easy to plan your growing beds. We built our first square foot gardens in 2009 after reading All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. The concept of Square Foot Gardening is to use a raised bed filled with a soil blend called Mel’s Mix (1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost from as many sources as you can). The Square Foot Gardening theory involves using a raised bed filled with a soil blend called Mel’s Mix.
Why We Use Raised Beds For Our Annual Crops with North Country Farmer – have to admit that I was a reluctant convert to raised bed gardening. I grew up gardening in tilled soil and I loved it. I loved the smell of freshly turned dirt and I enjoyed plowing and rotor-tilling. I always grew good crops that way and well, “if it ain’t broke…don’t fix it” has been my motto. Then we moved our family and cattle herd to the St. Lawrence valley, in the Thousand Island region of northern NY.
How To Build a Raised Garden Bed for Under $12 with Frugal Mama & The Sprout – When I first started researching raised garden beds, I was in shock at the pricing of those “raised garden bed kits” you can buy, I thought there had to be a cheaper way. I found it! and it’s as simple as pickets on a fence…
I’m Dreaming of a Square Foot Garden with Flip Flop Barnyard – Last year we began to implement the square foot gardening
method. It worked out quite well and we plan to continue with it this year. It is a great way for anyone to be able to grow quite a bit of food in a small space. We are fortunate to have a fairly large garden area but we have a lot of mouths to feed and also try to preserve enough for the year.
How to Build a Cedar Raised Bed Planter with The Untrained Housewife – We shop at Sam’s Club all the time – with five kids, what do you expect? It’s a monthly journey to stock up on the stuff we need and take a look at what Sam’s Club has going on. Right now they have some incredible outdoor living items available, including this cedar raised-bed planter – their Backyard Botanical Complete Gardening System. I was sent one to review and we’ve had it set up for about a month now.
Square Foot Garden Layout with Essential Homestead – For years, we would disc, till, fertilize and plant a row garden. Then we decided to fence in the garden area for cattle. I was tired of row gardening anyhow. Frankly, I didn’t have a garden plan for about a year. I just knew I needed that area for cows. I realized that I missed gardening, as hard as it was, but I didn’t miss the back-breaking work of row gardening. I started small with one raised bed and I really enjoyed it. So, my husband helped me expand and make a plan to go larger over the next few years. He put a fence around it with a gate. I just love my garden now.
Why Use Raised Garden Beds with Homesteading Hippie – We place cardboard and the paper from our chicken feed bags under the bed boxes to keep grass and weeds to a minimum. It’s much easier to weed when there isn’t any, right? Plus, the bags are made of paper so they get composted down. The only drawback is that we have to do that each year, since the bags don’t last after a season. Cardboard also composts down and we can go almost 2 years before we have to replace them. We figure out when it’s time when the weeding becomes more work and make a note in our garden book for that bed.
DIY Raised Bed with the Untrained Housewife – First, prepare your area. In our case, we had to remove all of the shale border and I had to dig out and replant a small rose bush. After moving all of the rocks and plants, I dug down about two inches against the sidewalk and around. During this time, the hubby cut six of the timbers in half and cut the rebar into 16in pieces.