Put Your Garden to Bed!

In the market for raised garden beds? If you're into gardening, raised garden beds may be rising in your future. Raised garden beds are a great way to grow vegetables as they can make the garden surface very easy to access. Raised garden beds come in many sizes. You can build raised garden beds yourself, or buy a kit that is easy to put together. Kits come in many sizes, and if you have an odd shape for a garden, building a garden bed yourself may be the way to go.  rnRaised garden beds can be made out of a wide variety of building materials. Cedar is one of the most popular woods to use for raised garden beds as it holds up well to water, dirt and weather. Other woods will certainly work also if you are building the beds yourself. For industrial strength garden beds that are raised high above the surface of the ground, corrugated steel may be employed as a building material.  rnWhile cedar beds can certainly go up to 12" in height, a taller bed will probably require the stronger steel to hold up to the weight of the dirt and water that will fill the bed. These raised garden beds will be even easier to access the soil surface since they will be so far off the ground. Thus, if bending over is difficult, you may want to build your beds of steel.  rnRaised garden beds do come in a variety of sizes, but three feet by three feet and four feet by four feet are probably the most common sizes. This allows easy acces to the plants from all sides. Even with a four foot bed, you won't have to reach more than two feet to get to the center of the bed. When room permits, some gardens are created with longer beds, even up to 16 feet. As long as the raised garden beds are no more than four feet wide, every vegetable will be only two feet or less from an edge. This is close enough to make gardening your beds very easy.  rnMany people like the idea of raised garden beds so much that they do all of their gardening this way. The raised beds allow you to control the soil completely, and it is easy to change out the soil if you decide you want a different composition. Yes, you'll still have to lift the soil out of the beds, but it will never get as compacted as ground soil since you'll have started with the perfect composition of dirt and humus and compost. Being able to exert complete control over the soil composition can be one of the secrets to growing a great vegetable. This is one of the reasons that raised garden beds have become so popular nowadays. No more trying to work more organics into your soil. Just build a bed, fill it exactly how you want it, and harvest the best crops you've ever had.