Raised bed gardening a great way to grow
First time I saw this kind of idea was about 25 years ago and it was New Year’s Eve. It was dark but we could see from a few lights.
My folks have a concrete patio behind their house and my dad had shoveled a path on the patio to the raised bed, hot frame. Dad reached down toward this little handle on a door and lifted this door up.
You could see he had shoveled the snow off the top of the raised bed. He reached down into the raised bed with some scissors and cut a little bib lettuce, some spinach, some Swiss chard tops and some parsley and put all the cuttings into a large bowl.
Mom did not spend much time cleaning and cutting the greens but put them over the rest of the salad she had prepared. Then we ate a fresh salad on New Year’s Eve.
I have been gardening for a long time and my life has been dramatically easier since I have been doing this form of gardening. But what is still amazing is that my parents both gardened even at 87 and 85, means that we all should be able to take up this very special hobby and that gets me excited. Being older I find that I don’t get very excited about many things, but this raised bed idea is very different.
Some of the basics behind raised beds
Let’s look at some of the basics behind raised beds. The basic premise behind a raised bed is that the soil is above ground level. This can be done very simply by nailing three untreated 1” x 6” x 8’ long boards to two untreated 2” x 4” x 24” boards forming a panel. Make two panels like this
The second step would be to cut more 1” x 6” x 4’ untreated boards and nail the six 4’ boards to each end forming a rectangle.
Once you have formed this rectangle you will have 6 inches at the top then cut an angle on these four 2” x 4” boards. This is where you would turn the frame over and secure it in the soil.
Once you have secured the frame in place, you start filling the space in the frame with the soil. This is a basic raised bed. As you might guess there are many variations.
The main reason why I don’t recommend using treated lumber is that the way that they make the treated wood is that the manufacturers place the boards in a pressurized chamber and put some serious toxins inside the chamber in some of the processes and force these toxins into the grain of the wood.
These toxins prevent the wood from rotting for an extended period of time, which means these compounds won’t leach out of the wood right away but will come out in some form over time.
Composite materials are also a little different in that composites will last and
provide the structure that a raised bed would need.
Here is a little twist that might solve the problem of having to replace the untreated lumber every few years.
Treated lumber, composite, or cedar to use as the frame would work if you had a barrier separating the soil from the wood.
In other words, a plastic liner or a pond type liner that would be open in the bottom of the raised bed to allow the water to drain so that you don’t have a water feature, I feel would be the safest. The key again is that the soil is not exposed to the wood inside the raised bed.
Benefits of raised bed gardening
One of the benefits is that you don’t have to bend over very far to work in the garden as you would in a ground level bed. I like this basic idea of saving my back.
For older folks this idea by itself may mean you won’t have to give up gardening. Because you don’t walk on the soil in these raised beds you don’t get the problems with the soil compaction.
The beds tend to be warmer than in ground beds and can be planted earlier and stay in the beds longer. By planting the seeds more densely you can prevent weeds easier by blocking the weeds out of the bed.
We have had a few days that have been really nice, and I hope you will have a good walk through your garden this week.