10 Common Raised Bed Garden Mistakes

welcome to my raised bed vegetable garden now I've grown vegetables for many years almost strictly in raised beds and at my last house it was basically out of necessity because we didn't have any sun in any spot where we had open ground or existing flower beds and so I had to get creative with this 20 by 20 square foot cement slab that was pretty much the only Sun that we had so I built 15 inch tall raised beds on top of the existing concrete it would have taken a lot of backbreaking work and a lot of money to have it hauled away so you can grow vegetables over soil in a raised bed over concrete in a raised bed or over contaminated soil as long as you put a solid bottom on there of some kind of food safe plastic but I do have several videos on how to build these type of raised beds and how to build the raised beds like I had at my old house and that'll get into all of that information I'll leave those links Down Below in the video description while those videos will tell you how to construct your raised beds this video is more about what you need to think of before even starting the construction of your raised beds and then what are some common pitfalls that people make after having the raised beds and starting to grow in them the first thing you want to get right is the location of your raised beds crops that you're going to grow Love full sun thrive in full sun which means six to eight hours of direct sunlight every day now those six to eight hours could be broken up maybe you have a tree somewhere that Shades your garden in the middle of the day but they get three or four hours in the morning and three or four hours in the evening that works too and typically what full sun requires is a south facing location if you're in the northern hemisphere so right over there is South so this Garden gets bathed in full size and every day all year if you're in the southern hemisphere obviously you want a North facing Garden you also want to position your vegetable garden near the house the kitchen preferably now right here we have our Mediterranean herb garden and then the vegetable garden is just right there another important thing to have is a water source semi nearby so that you don't you're not dragging hoses or watering cans or buckets across your property to try to get there but having your garden near the house is going to allow you to just run out there really quick when you need herbs or a quick vegetable some lettuce for dinner or whatever you're making if it's hundreds of feet away from your house or on the opposite side of your property you may not want to make that trick when it comes to building the actual beds a lot of times people make the mistake of making them too wide my favorite width for a bed is four feet and that allows me to reach into the center from either side it makes it much more comfortable you don't have to get in your Beds which is another mistake we'll talk about in a minute I also like eight foot long beds that allows you to make a bed with three pieces of wood by three eight foot pieces of wood cut one of them in half or have someone at the hardware store do it for you and then when you put them together you have no waste it saves money it saves time and it's just a really good bed size for many reasons you also want to consider the width of your path and you have to think about that when thinking about the overall space you have and then the width of your beds I like my paths to be at least two feet wide these are a little bit more than two feet wide but it allows me room to kneel between the beds comfortably to do any work that I need to do if you have any disabilities you're in a wheelchair you want to work out the corners of the paths because you want to be able to maneuver through the beds easily the next mistake sometimes people make is not building your beds High Enough and that all depends on your comfort level and what the substrate is that you're growing on top of now at my last house those beds were 15 inches high because I was growing on top of concrete so the bottom of the bed is literally the bottom of the roots so most vegetables need at least 12 inches of root run for them to grow properly now when I built the majority of the beds here in this Garden they were six inches tall and you can do that if you have good soil or decent soil underneath them that isn't contaminated that doesn't have a lot of perennial weeds even though their bed is raised six inches off the ground there's still plenty of root run they can have on deeper into the soil however here we have a gopher problem and so all of these beds on the bottom are basically edge to edge stapled in gopher wire 16 gauge galvanized hardware cloth so if you have Gophers that could be a solution for you because we have last year I had a gopher in here trying to get into these beds and he was going around and around them and could never get in so it definitely works it holds up for about 10 years chicken wire is too big and it doesn't hold up very long the problem I had with these six inch beds for certain things is if you want to grow root crops that are long like long carrots or parsnips uh you can't because they'll be stopped well if you don't have a gopher issue you can but if you have to have gopher wire on the bottom then those large Roots can't get through that go for wire so I have to grow short carrots which is fine the other problem is when you're making a TP for beans or having to pound posts in for something you can't pound it past the Gopher wire so in the three new beds I built here I actually built them twice as tall these are made out of two by sixes same here just two stacked on the top which gives me a 12 inch deep bed here and what's great about these simple framed beds is you can expand or grow them taller if you need to so probably over the next few years I'll slowly add height to all of these beds just like I did with this one and all you have to do is get a four by four or another piece of 2 2x4 in each corner drill them into the bottom so they're standing straight up and then build the top frame around that just gives some Corner support and keeps the top frame from moving off of the bottom frame now obviously as we get older or you have disability and have a problem bending or if you're in a wheelchair you want to bring it up to the height that you're comfortable with so you can use actually bigger boards you can use two by twelves maybe two or three of those on top of each other now what about the material you make your beds out of well it can be made out of almost anything first of all it could be made out of nothing if budget is an issue you can build up a six inch mound of good compost and just plant directly into that you don't need edges if you're going to go with edges though the cheapest would be wood but what kind of wood I'm using Douglas fir here it's a relatively cheaper option of wood doesn't last quite as long as a more expensive option like Redwood or Cedar those are definitely great choices as well they will cost a little bit more but they will last quite a bit longer what you want to stay away from is compressed or treated wood that would last a long time but at the expense of safety they are not as dangerous as they used to be when they were soaked in Arsenic however they are soaked in a substance called copper Azle and there is some scientific evidence that shows that it can Leach out of the wood and into the soil whether it leaches into your plants or not I don't know but I would rather be safe than sorry I'm growing organically here so I know what's in my vegetables and that puts up a question where or maybe I don't so I will have to replace these every several years maybe every five to seven years but it's also cheaper than the treated ones so to me it's a good trade-off these two beds here are made out of fabric a company that made these is Grassroots now the great thing about fabric beds is they will root prune so as the roots touch the edge of the container or raised bed instead of wrapping themselves around like you'll see in a root bound plant they actually stop growth at when they reach the oxygen they're getting through this Fabric and then they put the energy back into the root to shove out a bunch of side Roots that's going to make the plants more robust so fabric beds are great I'd grew peanuts and sweet potatoes in these last year they did great and the last choice is metal raised beds and those are great as well a lot of those come in really good Heights so you don't have to bend over so much so anything you want to use that's safe will be effective and will work for your raised that Garden the next thing you want to think about is what you're going to fill your bed with and that would be the next mistake is choosing the wrong soil and really any soil is the wrong soil we're growing in raised beds because they have a lot of benefits but especially because of the good drainage that you have and a light fluffy texture of the the mix that's put in here uh you can just dig your hands down in here like you would never be able to do in the ground and so you never want to use garden soil to fill your beds with garden soil is easily compactable even if you don't walk in your beds garden soil can compact just with watering especially if you have a dense soil like clay or even if you have a really freeze draining sandy soil that's going to be really too much drainage you'll never be able to keep moisture in here but even a good loamy soil is still not going to allow the bed to breathe the way it would with a raised bed mix or a potting soil that's where you're going to get the advantages of raised bed growing the downside of that is that is where 90 of your cost and raised bed gardening will be and that is what you fill it with so you can get some great bulk options like mushroom compost if you look locally for a mushroom farm they're willing to usually offload a lot of the used compost at a really good price they might even offer delivery um something that I've used for many many years is available I think nationwide at least possibly not out of the country but Kellogg's organic raised bed garden mix and I found that to be a really great option unfortunately one of the things we do have to worry about as home gardeners is the grazon issue if you don't know what that is grazon is a herbicide that is used in agriculture and a lot of times what happens is that's either taken like hay that is sprayed with it that will be composted down and sold as garden soil or an amendment or even manure if cows or horses eat that hay that is contaminated with grazon they poop it out it's composted and it's sold to you the Grayson no matter how it gets into your garden can stay there for up to three years and so you either either have to wait three years to be able to plant or you have to take it all out and start again so you really need to be careful on where you Source your filling material like I said that is the main cost of a raised bed is what you fill it with so if you are building a bed that's two feet or three feet high I mean the cost could be astronomical so there are ways to fill those beds that are taller with uh something that's a little less expensive now if you've got a six inch or a 12 inch raised bed it needs to be full compost full potting mix full whatever you're using it needs to be all of that however if you go up two feet or three feet you can put in any type of organic material and I'm not necessarily talking about organic like no chemicals I'm talking about anything that will rot down so if it's a three foot tall bed the bottom of that bed can be filled with logs and large branches and then the second foot could be filled with Twigs leaves hay whatever smaller material it's going to break down quicker can be that level and in the next level the next level would be or the or the top level would be your good compost potting soil raised bed mix what's going to happen is over the years all that lower material is going to break down your entire bed is going to be full of good Rich compost but in the meantime that top 12 inches is really where most of the roots hang out so they're going to be good to go until that bottom layer does break down another mistake a lot of gardeners make is not refreshing the soil that's in your bed either once or twice a year now you're going to notice at the end of the season the soil level is going to be a lot lower than when you start it and that could be for a few different reasons that could be erosion settling other reasons that aren't explained and we're not supposed to ask but it is kind of a mystery where all that goes and so every year in the spring and again in Fall now I do it in both times of year because here in our climate we can grow through the winter if you can only grow you know spring and summer where you live then amending it just once in the spring is great or once in the fall either way works and you just want to add another two to three inches of good compost or soil mix to your bed now not only will this you know keep the uh the root run as deep as it should be but it also all of the the microbes and the worms that are in your beds already are going to use that new soil to reinvigorate themselves reinvigorate the entire bed to be ready to produce more crops the next year it's also going to uh lessen the need for crop rotation a lot of times in the soil are the the bad bugs the bad microbes that will come back out if you plant the same thing the following year and they will be usually splashed up onto the plant so the all those microorganisms those bacteria you water it hits that old soil that was there last year it bounces them up to the leaves and then they take hold and they start to infest your plants putting a physical barrier of two to three inches of compost over that is just like a blanket so watering will hit that new compost and it won't have as much of a chance of spoiling your crop as if you didn't do that while we're still talking about soil the next mistake a lot of people make is actually walking in their beds you don't want to do that because you don't want to take away the airiness of the soil or the mix and so when you're walking on it you are compressing all of that life you're compressing the roots of the plants you're also pushing the soil down where it's going to take more soil to fill it up at the end of the year or the beginning of next and while we're on this subject and it probably could be another mistake is I don't do any tilling or digging in a raised bed you don't have to do that you don't want to disrupt the soil life you don't want to bring seeds and bad microbes from down below and turn them up where they're now on top exposed to either the light and more water for them to grow if they're weed seeds or bring them to the top to be able to Splash up on your plants if it's disease so no walking and no tilling which is why four feet wide where you can reach into the center of the bed is a good idea the next mistake a lot of people make is not mulching your beds mulching it has so many benefits um number one like I said before with adding compost it just is a physical barrier between the bad stuff that's hiding in your soil and your plants the second reason to mulch is to cut down on Weeds if weed seeds can't germinate because they don't have the light they won't germinate and so you won't have to be fighting weeds All Summer Long another reason is to keep the moisture in the soil I water with drip and if that is covered up it never sees the light of day so instead of half of it evaporating before it even touches the soil or right from that top inch of the soil it is able to soak in deeply the sun is also not baking the top of the ground so when you dig this this mulch up you're going to see the top of the soil is moist where there is no mulch the top of the soil is not moist so it's going to save you money on your water bill and if you water by hand it's going to save you a lot of time and then the last reason for mulch is because this mulch breaks down and is taken into the soil by the worms and the soil life to again enrich the soil and reinvigorate it now what can you use for mulch well just about anything that will break down now I'm trying something new this year I'm using pine shavings I have used a hay or straw in the past and that is a it's a good thing to use it does create some weeds whatever that straw was made out of will start to sprout but it's rooted in the actual straw so it pulls out very easily it's not a problem in my opinion the problem is my fear of grazon contamination in straw in Hay that has grown if you don't know where you're getting it from you it's a lot of times can't even ask if it has been sprayed with grazon so if you know where you're getting it from and you can ask that and they can tell you straw is a great a great choice but wood chips wood shavings those are a great choice because they don't have any graze on used on you know trees like that uh you could also use leaves you could use grass clippings although if you do I would keep it to a very very thin layer because they tend to stick together and make this carpet this mat that the water has a hard time getting through you also don't want to dig The Mulch especially like wood shavings straw you know bigger bigger things to wood chips for sure you don't want to dig that into the soil so if you're going to be planting you want to move that completely aside and then plant in the soil and then bury the seed or whatever or the plant and then put the mulch back if this gets buried in the soil it robs the soil of nitrogen because it takes nitrogen to break this down and that is nitrogen that your plants cannot use so on top of the ground is good mixed into the ground not good number 10 is winter protection now a lot of gardeners skip this because in the fall you're kind of tired and burnt out after a long summer and you just feel like I'll deal with this in the spring and that is a big big mistake if you have cold Icy Winters you need to protect the soil even if you just have rainy Winters you need to protect against erosion and so there's lots of ways to do it do that mulching actually is one of them I'm going to put a link to a video in the description that I did last fall about how I winterize my beds both for icy cold winter climates and Mild climates like I have here but you can use mulching you can use cover crops cover crops is basically sowing something now in an icy winter climate you would want to use like winter Rye or something like that that can handle the cold and uh crimson clover is another one Harry vetch crimson clover a lot of these things people think about as weeds because you have clover growing you have rye grass in your lawn why would you specifically intentionally put that in your bed well they're not going to make weeds if you treat them right and the way to treat them right when you're doing doing a cover crop is to sow the seed Let It Grow and if you live in a winter climate that freezes it it's going to kill it anyway so but the roots are still down there keeping the soil intact keeping it from erosion and then it's also giving material decaying material for the soil life to eat over the winter if you live in a mild winter climate then you can let that grow until it's starting to bloom and as soon as it's starting to bloom you cut it back to ground level that will kill it it will also stop it from spreading its seed and making an ongoing problem of weeds so if I counted correctly that is 10 mistakes that you might make when growing in raised beds if you learn something please give the video a thumbs up consider subscribing if you haven't already share it with a gardening friend and I'll see you next time

Channel: Next Level Gardening

Views: 163,823

Keywords: 10 common raised bed garden mistakes, raised bed gardening, raised garden beds, raised garden bed, raised bed garden, gardening for beginners, vegetable gardening mistakes, gardening, raised garden bed ideas, gardening mistakes, raised beds, gardening tips, raised bed mistakes, raised bed soil, epic gardening, common raised garden bed mistakes, garden, raised garden bed soil, benefits of raised beds, easy raised beds, filling raised beds with soil, next level gardening

Id: nQA7tzvcTnI

Length: 21min 44sec (1304 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023