The Tips of Gardening In Raised Garden Beds
Growing flowers, fruits and vegetables in a raised garden bed is good for your back, health, appetite, and the environment. These tips will help you succeed in build a garden with raised beds.
Planter Boxes or Raised Garden Beds?
The planting box most suitable for shallow root plants is independent, with solid sides and bottom. On the other hand, a raised garden bed includes sides but no bottom, and is located on top of the soil - allowing plants with deeper roots to grow beyond the depth of the bed.
Use an Environmentally-friendly Raised Garden Bed
Not all raised beds are the same. Determine the best approach for you by considering the following questions:
Where do you want to put your overhead bed?
Choose a relatively flat place where there is plenty of sunshine - avoid trees and bushes, because they will reduce the amount of sunlight that shines on plants. Even if the best location is in the middle of your backyard, don't worry about cutting grass or dragging gravel along the road. Instead, just build a raised garden on top.
Tip: Cut grass and weeds as short as possible to prevent weeds from growing. Then cover the bottom of the bed with a thick layer of overlapping newspapers or cardboard before adding soil.
How much sunshine can each elevated bed get every day?
If you want to grow vegetables, please make sure that the non-toxic overhead garden bed can get 8 to 10 hours of sunshine every day. More or even better. Sufficient sunshine for less than 6 hours will reduce the output of your garden. In fact, crops like tomatoes may never really bear fruit. On the other hand, crops like lettuce like some shadows. Consider planting appropriate flowers, fruits and vegetables under appropriate conditions in advance.
What do you want to grow on each bed?
Vegetables? Can companion plants stop pests? Perennial plants, including native plants that attract beneficial insects? Consider the mature size of each plant - height and distribution. (Corn, pumpkin, melon, potato and wax gourd need a lot of space to thrive.) Allocate enough space on the raised bed to accommodate the selected plants, otherwise you will see a decline in productivity.
Tip: You may want to plant vegetable seeds, seedlings or grafts in rows to make weeding and harvesting easier.
Organic Soil and Environmentally-friendly Raised Garden Beds
You may decide to fill your raised garden bed with purchased soil, compost, and conditioner. If you choose to move in this direction, please purchase organic soil and organic compost from reliable sources - if in doubt, please check the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) certification for this product.
Most gardeners use their existing soil on elevated beds, adding organic modifiers such as compost and fertilizer when needed. However, a frequently missed step is to conduct soil tests to determine the basic condition of the existing soil. Soil texture, soil acidity, lack or excess of soil nutrients, and soil pollutants, such as lead and other heavy metals, can be determined by soil testing.
Organic Vegetable Gardening in Raised Beds
Planting pollution-free fruits and vegetables is one of the key reasons for organic gardening. Therefore, when designing a raised garden bed for vegetables, you need to consider the root depth of the products you will plant; This depth determines the height of the frame.
Many vegetables have shallow roots 12 to 18 inches long, including arugula, broccoli, cabbage, chicory, garlic, cabbage, lettuce, onions, potatoes, and spinach. On the other hand, vegetables such as asparagus, lima beans, okra, parsnip, pumpkin, wax gourd, sweet potato, tomato and watermelon can have roots 2 to 3 feet underground.
Knowing the length of the root can guide you to raise the height of the garden bed. Because there is no barrier at the bottom of the raised bed, more deep-rooted vegetables may grow from organic soil to your existing soil. This may lead to the absorption of potential pollutants and the loss of organic state. If the soil below is polluted by toxins, please ensure that the raised bed is high enough to keep the roots in the organic soil happy.
Select organic seeds and plants
The organic raised bed garden starts from organic soil. For completely organic results, fill the garden with organic plants instead of planting plants in soil improved with synthetic chemicals. One option is to plant organic seeds; Vegetables and annual seeds are relatively easy to find, but organic perennial seeds need more work to find. Visit your local native plant nursery, find online retailers, and check the website of your local native plant association, which sometimes includes a list of plant resources.
Buying certified living organic plants is also a challenge. You will be luckier to find organic vegetable seedlings than flowering plants. Why? Vegetables are grown for consumption, which increases demand. Organic flowering plants often do not look as robust as those grown in traditional nurseries, so the demand is small. In addition, the cost of obtaining organic certification for nurseries is high.
To find organic flowering plants, look for small backyard growers or professional mail order nurseries to meet your needs for organic plants. Be prepared to pay more for organic plants, but think about how much you will save when you buy organic products from raised garden beds instead of supermarkets.
Control Insects in The Raised Bed
Pests are a reality in any garden. Keep your raised garden bed organic, and minimize plant damage by attracting nature's pest control: beneficial insects, such as ladybirds, lacewings and predatory wasps. Use the accompanying plants in and around the elevated bed to attract them. Dill, fennel, coriander, Golden Alexander, yarrow, sunflower and day lily are some good choices.
Associated plants also protect agricultural products by confusing pests that come to eat in the garden. You can separate rows of cabbage, broccoli or tomatoes from rows of onions, whose intense scenes confuse hungry insects and caterpillars. Carrots and flies are driven away by leeks.