Planting A Raised Bed Garden

October 11, 2009

Planting a raised bed garden is a simple process. By now, you’ve built your garden framework, mixed your perfect soil and everything is ready for the fun part.

In his latest revision of “Square Foot Gardening”, Mel Bartholomew recommends actually building a grid and leaving it on your bed, rather than stretching string across to form a square foot pattern. Either way, the raised bed garden is divided into “square feet” which makes for much easier planting. And the permanent grid is actually rather decorative, too.

Now you have to decide what you want to plant. You can mix all sorts of plants into this raised bed garden, but stick to the square foot rule.

If you look at the back of your seed packet, you will find basic planting instructions, including spacing. As I look at the back of a pack of Golden Wax bush beans, I see that the spacing is “20 inches / 4 inches”. That translates to 20 inches between the rows and 4 inches between the plants.

We have a raised bed garden, so we disregard the row spacing. It doesn’t apply to us because we don’t have to move any equipment down the row for cultivating or harvesting. So we concentrate on the 4 inches between the plants.

Four inches between plants is the spacing required in all directions. So, if we go to our square foot grid, we can see that we would get 9 bean plants in that one square foot by spacing the seeds every four inches. Broccoli requires 12 inches between plants, so we could only put one plant right in the center of one square on the grid.

The spacing for marigolds is 6 inches… which translates to 4 plants in a square foot of our raised bed garden.

Personally, I like to mix some flowers right in with my vegetables. It’s pretty that way and the flowers attract the bees we need for good pollination. Some flowers, like marigolds, actually repel a number of undesirables, thereby helping us keep our raised bed garden as natural as possible.

With a raised bed garden in Southwest Florida, you should be able to have something growing pretty much year round. In the worst heat of the summer or if you live on the northern edge of this area and have a threat of frost, it’s a simple matter to cover the raised bed garden and your crop. A bamboo pole (or other stake) drivin into the ground at the four corners of the bed can support either shade cloth or and old sheet to protect your plants. Remember to plant according to the seasons, though.

Broccoli and other cole plants such as cabbage and cauliflower, prefer cooler temperatures. Plant them to grow during our winter months. Tomatoes and most other vegetables that are grown during the summer months up north like more moderate temperatures. Plant them in the early spring (or late winter) to avoid frost but so they’ll be matured and finished by June when it starts to get hot. And during the dog days of summer, consider planting some of the “different” plants, those more suitable for a tropic climate. More about those later.

By Edna | Posted in Gardening For Everyone | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Why Build a Raised Bed Garden?

October 9, 2009

Why build a raised bed garden? There are a number of reasons:

  • They are attractive
  • They are easier on your back (once you’ve built them)
  • They grow more plants in less space
  • They save on resources like water and fertilizer
  • They let you grow a garden on otherwise poor soil

We’ve already talked about some of these points. Let’s look at the resources issue today.

Traditionally, you plow the garden in early spring, get it into workable condition, and then broadcast fertilizer, lime or whatever other soil improvements you deem necessary. Then you mark off your rows with proper spacing between them so you’re able to get your cultivating tools up and down the rows to control the weeds.

With a raised bed garden, you usually don’t have to do much more than rake the soil to break up any crust that may have formed on the surface. Then you add your compost or other fertilizer and soil amendments, but only to the raised bed. You aren’t wasting it on the paths between the beds. That’s a savings right there.

The paths between the raised beds are just that: paths. They don’t need cultivating or hoeing. You just run the lawn mower over them if they are grass covered paths, or if you are a bit fancier and put down a hard surface like brick or pavers, you don’t have to do anything at all.

I like to water my raised bed garden with a drip system. You can get starter kits at Home Depot or other big box stores that include a pressure reducer and enough tubing to get you started. Then you attach it to a garden hose and you’re good to go. The entire garden can be watered at once and since it’s a drip system, there is no run-off or excess evaporation. The water is put right where it’s needed, close to the roots of the plants.

It doesn’t matter if your soil is poor, rocky, sandy, or whatever. You made the perfect soil and used that to fill the raised bed garden, thus creating a pocket of perfection, just for your garden. And because you only use it to fill the raised bed framework, you save money.

No more spring plowing, no more fertilizing the paths so the weeds can flourish, no more hoeing or cultivating to control the weeds.

A properly planted raised bed garden is pretty much weed-free because the plants themselves keep the soil shaded and weeds, just like any other plants, need sunlight to sprout and grow.

By Edna | Posted in Gardening For Everyone | Tagged | Comments (2)