Re: [CH] Raised Bed Gardening Suggestions?

Ted Wagner (trwagner1@yahoo.com)
Sat, 21 Feb 2004 09:09:41 -0800 (PST) 

Jeff,

My wife and I are going to make a raised bed this year...problem with our yard is the back is
lower than the middle (FHA drainage guide lines, etc. for these new homes).  My current plot for
the chile plants is close to the house and it currently is well drained.  We are going to do a
raised bed for other plants...that way I can grow more chiles!  ;)

We attempted a garden last year in the spot we are going to put the raised bed...if anything else,
the base soil will be better off for when we put in the raised bed.  The raised garden will give
us the drainage we don't have (for a garden that is).  We are going to put in a 12 x 6 or 8 x 4
raised garden in...haven't decided yet.  We'll have to wait until early May after the soggy ground
gets dry enough to go back in that part of the yard.

The simple approach is to just take 2x6 or 2x8 boards from the lumber yard, make the rectangular
box you want for the raised garden and then fill it up with a good mix of soil and organics.  This
worked quite well for me when I lived in Summerville, South Carolina in 1980 and 1981.

The disadvantage to this is fit to the yard.  If you don't get a good fit with the lumber to the
ground, you can sometimes get a bit of a washout on some of your soil in the bed.  But, one way to
correct that is to put strips of burlap along the bottom edges of all the boards...when you lay
the box on the ground, pull the burlap in.  The burlap makes a "filter" of sorts in the crevice
created between the boards and the ground.  Burlap is also cheap.

For boards, use regular wood.  I've been told, but haven't verified, that treated wood is often so
new and wet that the chemicals used to treat the wood will leech into the soil.  Not sure how true
that is, but regular boards seem to last plenty long enough.

One word of caution, where I lived in South Carolina, the soil had quite a bit of clay.  If you
have a lot of clay, you should put some drainage holes into the bottom of the wood on the low side
of the box.  That's also where the burlap comes in handy...water goes out but soil doesn't so bad.

This has worked for me.  One other point is always keep an eye on raised beds.  You'll soon learn
how well it drains...sometimes they can drain too well!  Don't let the soil dry out.  The good
thing about raised beds is that you can do them in various ways with various materials.  It's a
very flexible way to grow plants of any kind.  And, honestly, in someways, it's just a bigger form
of container gardening.

Ted

--- Jeff Porter <Jeff.Porter@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Hello fellow CH'ers!  We moved into a small community of new homes recently
> and I'm dying without a garden.  I need to come up with something tasteful
> and not 'offensive' to the non-gardeners that I'm sure are all around me.
> I'm thinking of building a small raised bed garden, maybe 8'x8' or possibly
> 12'x12'.
> 
> Does anyone have any experiences about building one or web sites used in
> your own research to do so that you'd be willing to share.


=====
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USMT -- http://www.unitedstatesmilitarytelegraph.org
Seeing isn't believing, believing is seeing...

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