Growing in a raised bed is a smart way to increase your garden yields, lighten your workload, and improve the aesthetics of your garden. When you’re new to gardening, growing in a raised bed can help reduce the margin for error, too.
If you’re new to this method of growing your own fruits and vegetables, consider these 10 common raised bed gardening mistakes – and avoid making them when it’s your turn to start growing.
1. Picking the Wrong Spot
Your raised bed location should receive at least six hours of direct sun each day. If you’re siting your location in early spring, be sure to consider what surrounding trees will look like come summer and where their shade will fall. Pick somewhere relatively flat, but avoid low-lying areas such as the bottom of a hill where rainwater collects. Putting raised beds up against a fence or wall means you won’t be able to access all four sides easily.
2. Ignoring the Soil
It’s easy to get carried away with planning out what kinds of vegetables you will plant in your raised bed and how you will harvest them – but neglecting to care for the soil is a surefire way to cause your garden to fail.
Just lie a living creature, soil changes and grows over time. Its conditions can change between growing seasons, so just because you added plenty of compost when you first built the raised bed, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the soil for the next ten years.
3. Using the Wrong or Dangerous Building Materials
Consider your building materials and how long they will hold up in your climate before making a choice. Cinder blocks, reclaimed bricks, and stones are all good choices as well. You can even use small branches to weave together a wall for your raised bed. Using what you have on hand is always the best option.
One material that should never be used is old railroad ties. These have been coated with creosote to help them stand the test of time. The creosote leaches into the soil over time, and it’s bad news for both plants and people.
4. Using Weed Killers
Avoid using any kind of herbicide in or near your raised bed garden. These chemicals can linger for many years, poisoning the soil and making it difficult for you to grow anything in your beds. They can become even more dangerous when it rains, so the runoff can carry the toxins to other areas of your garden.
5. Building a Too-Big Bed
While it’s tempting to create a large plot, it’s important to keep logistics in mind. Your plot should be narrow enough that you can reach at least halfway across it to plant, weed, water, and harvest in the middle. Three to five feet wide, which is the size of most premade kits, is ideal for most people. Avoid making it too long as well; you don’t want to become frustrated walking in giant circles around your plot. If you have the space and desire, you may be better off creating multiple smaller raised beds.
6. Not Mulching
Raised beds are tiny micro-climates, and they dry out faster than a normal garden. Keep your plants happy by mulching your raised beds once the plants are established. This will help your plants retain moisture as well as cut down on weeds.
7. Not Planning Water Systems Ahead of Time
Both overwatering and underwatering can kill a plant in no time. Therefore, it’s essential that you plan out irrigation systems before the water becomes an issue (after your plants have already been planted).
Not sure how much water to supply? Invest in an irrigation system with a smart controller. These systems have moisture sensors that will adjust the amount of water based on how much water has already been supplied to the garden via natural rainfall.