Raised Garden Bed Construction
One of the best ways to get a garden started is to build raised garden beds. One advantage to building or using a raised garden bed for your vegetables and flowers is that you don't have to perform the awful chores of picking out all the stones, pulling out the weeds and turning the soil. All you have to do really is pick the location, set up the retainer walls and fill it with soil and good compost and mulch around the plants. More and more raised garden beds are being used because they give you a head start each year of putting in seeds and seedlings on account of the soil will warm up sooner than a ground based garden bed. Your first thing to do is pick out the type of material to use for the walls of the garden. Maybe not having thought of doing this before you will see that there are a broad assortment of materials to use for the walls. One way is to use rocks piled up, this gives a farmy of old look. Bricks or blocks will give a neat and tidy look providing a formal look. Wood is probably the most used because of price and easier to assemble. Many people use railroad ties but are extremely heavy and many of my friends claim the creosole in those ties can leach into the vegetable garden and may cause some health problems. No problem if using for flowers only. Whatever you use to build your garden with just get enough to make it as high as is convenient. Determining the height of the bed is up to you but consider what height you want to bend down to. Most are 1 to 2 feet tall and even up to 4 to 5 feet tall. You can even create a tiered garden at different levels. What you do is dependent on your budget and effort you can put into this project. After deciding on the materials to use for the walls then you need to look where to put those raised garden beds. Some items you need to consider is how much of an area is needed and will you get good sunshine all day long or at least 6-8 hours for a raised vegetable garden and for a flower bed then build for specific plants that are suited for full, part or no sun. Looks like it is time to build that garden bed, now that the materials and location has been settled. Just take your materials and put them into the shape you want your bed frame and when that is done just fill the frame with your soil and compost combination. What you want to do now is put in enough soil and compost to fill the bed frame to within 2 inches of the top. Remember that all this will settle over the next few days, so put in enough. At last, time to plant. Whichever you prefer, you can place seeds directly, place starter seedlings or put in more mature plants. As soon as you have the plants in the new garden, mulch them with a good local made material. You don't want the plants to dry out or bake the soil around the plants. I call mulch 'mother's nature blanket' because of its protective capabilities. Water when needed and take pride in what you and you alone have built and produced. Good luck.
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