Raised Beds Ideas, Tips & Guides

The growing season might be in full swing, but there are still ways to upgrade your garden game. From keeping out unwanted pests (or pets) to building your own customized trellising and irrigation—it’s time to make your beds work smarter, not harder. We’ve got five ways to customize your planters this summer that will not only make things look fantastic, but will take your growing capabilities to the next level. Whether you choose to tackle them all or just add one to your list of weekend to-dos, I promise it will be a noticeable refresh with rewarding results. 

A Review of the Vego Garden Modular Metal Raised Beds

By the end of last month, the paving was finished and I had planted my three front garden planters with peppers, bergamot and salvias for the summer. They’re coming along very nicely, and in fact the first cool chilli is appearing on one of my Fooled You plants.

When the sun shone on Saturday morning, and the rain promised to delay until midday, we hatched a plan to build two more of the raised beds in the garden. One half of the garden – 6 beds – was completed last year, leaving 6 more to go. We don’t have space for them all until we take the old shed down, but we found room for two next to Ryan’s workshop.

On Saturday we managed to build the remaining 4 raised beds for the back garden, which is now nicely symmetrical. They’re made from (eco-treated) half sleepers, which are not light – building a raised bed means a lot of heavy lifting. Even so, it was the weather and not the effort involved that has slowed us down. We’d been waiting until the garden dried out!

Last weekend Ryan and his dad built the first six of my raised beds (ultimately there will be 12 in the garden, giving me a little over 17 square metres of prime planting space). Now they need filling.

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When Ryan and I first built our garden, we installed wooden raised beds. They’ve been great – a good size, nice and deep, and easy to perch on. We choose eco-treated wood, and we’ve been trying to encourage a vibrant ecosystem in the garden, and that’s worked too well – it has decomposed the raised beds!

Earlier this year, my father-in-law (FIL) visited while Ryan and I were finishing up putting the new metal-framed raised beds in our garden. He said, rather wistfully, that he missed having a vegetable garden. Although he and my mother-in-law (MIL) have quite a large garden, it’s all given over to ornamentals as my MIL is a highly skilled florist. (She did the flowers for our wedding.)

Raised beds are a common way to grow edible and floral plants when either space is limited, bending down to the surface of the native soil is a challenge, when the present soil is not healthy/ compacted or non-existent (ex. concrete), or used for simply aesthetic purposes (window boxes). For more information, see HGIC 1257, Raised Beds

I’m a believer that each raised bed, which I like made from 2-by-10’s, must be a level entity unto itself, but that all the beds within a plot don’t need to match in terms of how much they extend out of the ground. To make them match on my crazy terrain, you’d have to build the downhill-side walls of the lowest ones several times as high as the uphill sides of the highest ones (if you can even decode that sentence). Then you’d have to bring in about 10 truckloads of soil and shovel for a year to fill them.Like I said, it’s easier to explain in photos, but first one more thought: Strive to have your pathways between beds, which should be just wide enough for a wheelbarrow, end up on the level, too. Nothing worse than uneven footing while working, or having a barrow-load of so

WHAT CAN A RAISED BED BE BUILT FROM, and what dimensions should it have? That question, from member LuckyKate44, was my favorite this week on the Urgent Garden Question Forum, where moderator Leslie and others are busy offering up answers from wattle to locust, talking the pros and cons of pressure-treated, and more.

Q. Everybody’s getting their vegetable gardens going, and there were multiple questions about raised beds in particular—such as this one from Tracey, who was building new ones at her garden: How deep should a raised bed be, and what is best to make them out of? A.  I recently did a story about hugelkultur, building raised beds out of fallen wood debris such as logs and branches, but I suspect Tracey wants the more conventional solution, which is what I have used to grow vegetables in my garden the last 20-plus years.I like 10-inch-deep raised beds, but 8 inches is also absolutely fine, and of course saves o

Kevin’s new book, “Urban Gardening: How to Grow More Plants No Matter Where You Live,” includes many raised-bed construction styles to consider, some impromptu and others more permanent, and his tips for success growing in them.Kevin’s garden [above] couldn’t be much more different from mine. He’s in urban San Diego Zone 10B; I’m rural New York Zone 5B. Most of his garden is in raised beds and other containers, and mine is mostly in the ground, but we have lots in common, too. We talked about successful above-ground growing methods and more, how he plants intensi

Bamboo plant supports are the perfect supports for tall and vining vegetables like tomatoes, pole beans, and cucumbers. They’re strong and sturdy, so they serve a practical purpose, but they’re also extremely ornamental and add a natural element to the garden. Plus, there are many types of bamboo structures for every sized space, including containers. In this article, we’re going to share some of our favorite bamboo staking and trellising products, offer advice on when and how to use them, and the best plants to pair with these attractive structures.

Raised bedsare planter boxes made from wood, stone or concrete, in a rectangular or curved shape. Its an enclosed arrangement filled with soil rich in organic matter for growing vegetables, fruits, and flowering plants. Let’s discuss What are Raised Beds and how you can make one or many in your garden!

For the past few years, cucumbers, squash, and zucchini have wilted in my garden –  no matter what.My best guess is that my soil is infected with a virus, be it phytophthe