Raised garden beds

Raised garden beds

Creating raised garden beds is a wonderful way to get a garden started easily. When you plant your flowers or vegetables in raised garden beds, you don’t have to pull weeds first, turn soil, or dig out a lot of rocks and other debris. Instead, you simply choose the location you want your garden bed to be, lay down your bed retainer walls, and fill it with dirt.

Raised garden beds are popular because they’re easy, but also because they allow you to start growing seeds and small starter plants earlier in the season. A raised garden bed will become warmer earlier in the season than a ground based garden bed, and that allows you to start your gardening earlier in the year.

The first step to creating your raised garden bed is to choose the materials you’ll use for the walls of the bed. There are a wide variety of materials that can be used to create your garden bed. Rocks for instance, can be piled together into a rock wall design. Bricks can also be used to create a more formal looking garden bed too. Wood or railroad ties are easy, attractive and sometimes even free too.

Regardless of what you choose to create your garden bed with, you’ll need to gather enough materials to make the bed as high as you’d like it. Some people like to create garden beds just a foot or two tall, while others create tiered garden beds which have multiple levels ranging from a foot or two in height, to four or five feet at the tallest level. How you design yours is completely up to you of course, and your budget.

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Garden Tip...

If one has a fine lawn and desires to keep it so, he should never work upon or mow it when the turf is wet or soggy. The impression made by the feet in walking over the sod while in this state, will leave the surface rough and uneven afterwards. Do not water the grass or plants while the sun is shining hot, as it will scorch the leaves and make them turn yellow. All weeds, such as dandelions, plantain, etc., growing up through the grass, should be carefully and thoroughly dug out by the roots with a knife or pointed spade; if allowed to remain, they will soon become so numerous as eventually to kill out the grass and give to the lawn an appearance of neglect.
~ James Sheehan
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Once you’ve decided on the materials you’ll use to create your raised garden bed, the next step is to choose the location for the bed. Where you place your garden bed will depend on how much space you need, and how much sunlight you’ll need too. If you’re building a raised garden bed to plant a vegetable garden for instance, you’ll want to place the bed in a location which gets at least five to six hours of sunlight each day.

Now that you have your materials and location chosen, it’s time to build the bed. And all you need to do is simply lay out your material in the design you want for the garden bed to create the bed frame. Once the frame for your garden bed is ready, then you just need to fill it with soil. Put enough soil into the new garden bed to bring it to at least one or two inches below the top of your garden bed frame.

All that’s left now is planting. You can plant small starter seedling plants in your bed, sow seeds directly, or put more mature plants in, whichever you prefer. After planting your plants in the new garden bed, surround them with some type of mulch material such as tree bark or dry grass clippings, so the plants and bed won’t dry out too quickly during hot spells.
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Garden Tip...

The Calla Lily, or "The Lily of the Nile," is an old and popular favorite, and is found in window-garden collections everywhere. It is a native of the tropics, where it is said it grows to an enormous size; a single flower often measuring one to two feet in diameter. The Calla will attain its highest perfection if planted in a rich, mucky soil, obtained from a swamp or bog. It also requires an abundance of water during the growing season. Callas, like all other bulbous plants, must have a season of rest. If required to bloom during the winter or spring months, they must be rested in the summer season, if this is not done we must not expect to have any success in flowering them. The blooming season can be reversed if desired, by resting in winter. Without allowing them at least three months of rest, it is useless to expect to flower them successfully. By "resting," we mean to withhold water, and allow the leaves and stalks to die down completely to the bulb. Then turn the pot on its side under a tree or grape-arbor, and let the soil dry up completely; this will kill the stalk but not injure the bulb.
~ James Sheehan
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