Raised Bed Gardens

So what have we been doing the last couple weeks in addition to many other tasks? Building and planting our garden.

I've had this thing about wanting to use raised bed gardens for some time. Yep, there is quite an initial investment of time and money, but weeding is easy, there is no problem with drainage, moisture is better controlled, you can do concentrated gardening to maximize your space and crowd out weeds, etc.

When we lived at our previous residence, we made 4' x 8' and 4' x 16' raised bed gardens. We had grass around all of them, so we had to trim, which was NOT fun. Experience is worth gold. This time, we put plastic down when we seeded our lawn so grass did not grow under the garden area. Then we hauled in road gravel (class 5) on top of the plastic. No more trimming!! We discussed many options for how to build the 4' x 48' boxes. We checked into the cost of plywood, 2" x 6" tongue 'n groove boards, brick and plastic lumber. In the end, we went with the 2" x 6" treated tongue 'n groove boards because they were strong, would last a long time and were within our budget.

(Plastic lumber was VERY appealing, but it's quite expensive, we would have had to pre-drill all of our holes for assembly and getting the pallets off the semi was going to be challenging.)

So here is the initial stage of framing up the first box after the Class 5 was put down over the black plastic.


Because we used treated lumber, we had to line the boxes. We ordered custom-sized 19 mil plastic. I had called the Extension office about any dangers of using treated lumber. They said that in all their studies, if the boxes are lined with plastic, there is no leaching from the wood to the plants.

You will notice here that we also covered up the cross braces of wood with plastic. We took a shovel to punch holes in the bottom of the beds through the plastic for drainage. Because of their height and our experience with raised beds before, I'm happy with this set-up as it will allow some drainage, but will also maintain some moisture in the boxes. Then we filled them up with compost manure from a farmer friend.



So now we have 3- 4' x 48' raised garden beds that are about 20" tall. There is almost 5' between boxes so that our lawn mower with trailer will fit inbetween when I need to haul in mulch or compost. This picture was taken this morning. The box closest on the picture was planted about 2 weeks ago. Overall, the plants are doing well. I think that the soil has a bit too much nitrogen. I didn't take the time to test the soil. It was getting late in the season and I just wanted to get plants in the ground. Some things are growing like hot cakes and others aren't doing so great. I plan to test the soil for next year and also am thinking that the soil will just naturally compost itself more by next year as well.

The initial couple years of compost manure takes diligence to get rid of weeds, but after that, it's very easy to keep ahead of them and with raised beds, you don't have to battle quack grass! Sure, premium black dirt without weed seeds would be ideal, but we got what was available to us and it will work fine. Because there were a lot of weed seeds to contend with, and for other reasons, I was behind on weeding. I am SO thankful that family who came to visit this weekend helped me get a handle on the weeds.

I also am trying companion planting this year. I think I'll write more about that in another post.

May you be blessed today as you draw closer to Him!