Raised Planting Bed

If you live on a rural homestead with ample acreage, siting your gardens usually comes down to choosing among many good options. But if you live in a home with a smaller lot, your foray into gardening will take more planning. It will require you to make extremely efficient use of your gardening space to achieve the volume of produce you want. In many cases, this challenge is addressed by sowing your plants in raised garden beds.

Raised garden beds offer several advantages over planting at ground level. When segregated, soil can be amended in a more targeted way to support high density plantings. Also, in raised garden beds, soil doesn’t suffer compaction under foot traffic or machinery, so plant roots are free to spread and breathe more easily. Vegetables and flowers planted at high densities in raised beds are placed far enough apart to avoid overcrowding, but close enough to shade and choke out weeds. In raised beds, you can also water plants easily with soaker hoses, which deliver water to soil and roots rather than spraying leaves and inviting disease.

Raised garden beds can easily be customized to fit the space you have available. Just make sure you can reach the center easily. If you can only access your raised bed from one side, it’s best to build it no wider than 3 ft. Beds that you can access from both sides can be as wide as 6 ft., as long as you can reach the center. You can build your raised bed as long as you’d like.

Tip: For low-growing plants, position the bed with a north-south orientation, so both sides of the bed will be exposed to direct sunlight. For taller plants, position the bed east-west.