Ten tips for growing a garden in raised beds if you’re a beginner as well as five reasons why I love to garden in raised beds.
I grew up gardening with my mom and have grown vegetables my entire life but I had never planted a garden in raised beds until we moved here.
A few years ago we purchased vacant land, built our little cottage, and then spent the next summer mapping out a large garden space thinking we could plant easily. After tilling up the soil we quickly realized we’d chosen the same location where the original farmhouse once sat over 100+ years ago.
We uncovered huge pieces of the old farmhouse foundation and hundreds, maybe thousands, of broken pieces of glass and junk. That discovery lead us to researching raised beds, forgoing planting in the ground, and opting for building out a garden space with twelve 4×8 ft raised garden beds instead. After 5 years of growing a garden in raised beds, I’ve learned a lot!
Raised Beds Are Wonderful For Beginners Because You Can Start Small And Add More Beds To Your Garden Space In Time
Whether you are brand new to gardening or a lifelong gardener, if you’re considering how to garden in raised beds, here are 10 tips for success and 5 things I really love about gardening in raised beds.
1. Choosing the location of your raised beds
Your plans need sunshine so the location of your raised beds is important. Choose a space that gets at least 6 hours of sun per day if you’ll be growing full sun plants, part sun plants requiring 3-6 hours of direct sunlight and so on. Consider where you have space to grow and what you’re wanting to plant ahead of time. If your only option for your raised bed is a back deck, take into account how much sunlight it gets and choose your plants accordingly.
2. Choosing the right raised bed for your space
There are so many raised bed options these days. Determine the desired height, size and look you’d like before shopping around.
There are countless different raised beds available to buy and tons of ways to make them yourself. I made our twelve wood raised beds years ago and they have held up great! You can read all about how I built our raised garden beds HERE. My beds are lower to the ground and I can reach the entire bed easily with a hoe and I can sit on the sides or corner seats when pulling smaller weeds by hand, so 2 ft tall works well for me (I’m 5’9″ and can reach pretty far quite easily). If you’d prefer not to bend or reach far, consider a raised bed that’s more elevated.
HERE and HERE are some ready to assemble beautiful cedar options. I have them in my greenhouse and they are wonderful!
I’ve even seen stone, patio pavers, and brick raised garden beds that are stunning, but defiantly much more of a permanent option. I love RTA cedar planter style raised beds for any true beginner because they’re affordable, portable and very easy to assemble.
3. Beginner friendly vegetables to grow in raised beds
When it comes to choosing what plants to start with, thinking through what you actually enjoy eating first and foremost! Some of my very favorite vegetables happen to be some of the easiest to grow. Some of my must haves are peppers, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, herbs, lettuce, chives, onions, sweet peas, green beans, strawberries, cucumbers.
Theses are all staples in my yearly vegetable garden and have been for over twenty years! They are our favorite to eat fresh and they all can either be canned, frozen or turned into jams or sauces to last us through the winter months.
4. Growing cut flowers in raised beds
If you’re primarily growing veggies, be sure to consider sprinkling in flowers as well. Flowers like Marigolds are well known for their natural ability to repel garden pests like nematodes. I also love adding things like Zinnias, Cosmos, and Dahlias for cut flowers and pollinator plants like Black-Eyed Susan’s, Lavender, and Sunflowers!
5. Healthy soil
Healthy soil, water and sunlight are essentials of a healthy garden. Organic matter and rich soil is the foundation. There are many organic soil options on the market. Our vegetables derive their nutrients such as potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus from the soil. If your soil is depleted, your food will also be depleted of nutrients. Before filling your raised bed with random soil found in your back yard, be sure to test it or just go the simpler route and purchase rich, nutrient dense organic soil for your beds and you’ll be so happy you did…trust me it makes all the difference!
6. What not to plant in a raised bed
Sprawling plants and anything that takes up a lot of space are not happy in a small raised bed. Anything with a deeper root system will not grow as tall as it should if it’s planted in soil that is only 1 or 2 ft. deep. Plants like Corn, Potatoes, Squash, and invasive herbs grow better planted directly in the ground where there is more space to sprawl out and depth.
However, sprawling plants like peas, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers do well in raised beds when they have some sort of trellis to support their growth. Keep in mind that sprawling plants that are too heavy won’t do well on a trellis (things like larger melons or squash).
7. Placement of plants
When deciding how to space out your plants, keep in mind where the sunlight is. Place shorter plants where they will get sunlight and larger plants should be placed near the back (in a way that when they grow taller, they won’t shade everything in the bed).
8. Spacing plants in a raised bed
When I first started gardening in beds, I did a lot of research to see how many of each type of plant I could fit in each bed for optimal productions as well as health and growth of the plant. I was shocked to learn just how much can easily grow in one 4×8 garden bed. I used the free garden planner from Gardener Supply and always refer back to it when planning my garden each spring. Also, refer to the seed spacing instructions on the back of each seed packet for helpful information.
9. Biggest and most common mistake
Over-Watering is one of the biggest reasons why plants die and over-watering is even more likely when first starting out gardening in raised beds. It took me a few months to figure out just how much water my plants needed and to learn how my raised beds filtered and drained.
It was a big learning curve for us since we were use to planting directly in tilled soil. The first year summer I struggled and the following spring I mixed in Organic Perlite to help with drainage, aeration and water retention making it so I watered even less, but my plants stayed hydrated and happy!
10. Helpful Gardening Tools
- Plant Markers
- Garden Gloves
- Hose
- Watering Can
- Pruners
- Garden Hoe
- Trowel/ planting tools
- Garden Hat
- Kneeling Pad (if bed is lower)
- Raised bed/ Bed liners/ Arched Trellis
- Soil/ Compost/ Soil additives such as organic fertilizer / Perlite/vermiculite
5 things I love about raised bed gardening
- They are elevated so the Beds warm up quicker in the spring and water drains sooner so we can plant our veggies and flowers earlier in the spring!
- You choose your own soil, so you don’t have to settle for the native soil (maybe poor soil) that is in the location of your chosen garden space.
- Much less soil compaction because the bed is raised, you’re not stepping on the beds compacting the soil
- You get to choose the height of the bed, making it easier on your back, knees and if high enough , keeping rabbits out of your veggies!
- Raised beds really define your garden space which can help keep pets and children from running through it, but also gives your garden a much more beautiful, planned out look!
