Raised beds pack a lot of growing power into a small space. They provide an excellent growing environment for all types of plants including vegetables, flowers, herbs, and berries, as well as offering gardeners ways to overcome a variety of difficult growing conditions.
Easier Maintenance: Raised beds are easier to maintain. When it comes to watering, weeding, and harvesting, plants remain easily accessible from all sides. Design variations can be made to accommodate difficult terrain and suit any landscape theme.
Efficient Use of Resources: Anything added to the soil to support plant growth (e.g. fertilizers, water, soil improvers) are all concentrated within the growing areas so there is no waste. The same is true for the application of sprays and oils used to control insects and disease.
Expanded Growing Space: In a raised bed system, walking paths are created between the beds not between plants. This allows you to dedicate all of the growing space for crops, and allows you to space plants closer together, which maximizes yields.
Fewer Weeds and Pests: Closely spaced plants shade the soil and suppress weeds. The edges of raised garden beds also act as a barrier to invading grasses and weeds and help protect plants from a variety of crawling pests including slugs and snails.
Improved Soil Conditions: Instead of battling poor soil conditions, raised beds can be built over existing sites and filled with nutrient-rich soil.
Lack of Soil Compaction: The soil in raised beds is never walked on so it stays loose and friable.
Rapid Soil Warming: Better drainage in the spring allows the sun to warm the soil faster for earlier planting.
Reduced Physical Strain: Because you work at a higher level, the kneeling and bending that comes with traditional gardening is minimized. Also, for gardeners with limited mobility, raised beds can be custom built to a height and width that accommodates the physical limitations of the individual.
This page contains the following solutions.
I used plastic cat litter buckets in my garden. My small raised bed is not deep or big enough to grow tomatoes. I drilled a few drain holes along the bottom, plus used a circular saw bit and cut a large 4" hole in the middle. I raised the soil depth and allowed the roots to extend out the bottom into the raised bed soil.
Why not make a raised garden in an old bath tub? The reason I ask is that when my hubby and I were at a flea market, they had a very large old bath tub for sale.
This is a page about building raised beds. There are a variety of reasons to build raised garden beds, from poor soil to creating a more orderly garden space.