15 Raised Garden Bed Mistakes Every Gardener Should Avoid

after a full season of growing in my new raised garden beds i've made my fair share of small but crucial mistakes so in this video i'm going to be going over my top 15 raised garden bed mistakes for beginners or for intermediate whatever you guys are i'm sure i got something for you let's get into it [Music] hey guys this is devin from prepping to survive where i help you live a simple safe and happy life i have found many great benefits to using a raised garden bed rather than having an in-ground bed such as no soil compaction from footprints so you're not walking on your raised garden beds less weeds to deal with and you extend your growing season because the soil will warm up quicker in the spring and then stay hotter or warmer in the fall now let's talk about it so tip number one is your soil mix at the very start of your raised garden bed one of the most common mistakes i see new gardeners make in their raised garden bed is to add poor quality soil right off the bat right at the start do not use topsoil or garden soil alone since the nutrients aren't readily available and your raised garden bed soil is going to be compact down much quicker so try to fill your top 10 to 12 inches of your raised garden bed with quality soil this can be compost raised garden mix or a combination of topsoil and either of those some of these raised garden beds you can build them as tall as you want some of them come 20 inches so you don't have to sit down or kneel down as much when you're doing your gardening so you can fill the bottom part up with whatever you want you can do something like a huge culture where you put branches or logs or leaves larger organic material at the bottom below your 10 to 12 inches but the 10 to 12 inches the remaining top 10 to 12 inches should be filled with the highest quality soil the large organic material at the bottom will break down over time and that will keep your soil full of nutrients for your deep rooted crops keep in mind that no matter what you do at the beginning you it will take time for your soil to have the perfect ecosystem with your microbes your bacteria your fungus all that combined it does take time so it is important to start with good quality soil but then also amend it over time and this brings me to my second tip keep amending your soil whether you make your own compost or you buy some from the store it's extremely crucial for you to add compost after you've taken all your crops out since they will use the nutrients in the soil so that's the amending part of this add one inch of compost over top of either your whole raised garden bed which will cost more or where you pulled the roots out of sprinkle about one inch around that area compost can get very expensive especially if you're using a lot of it so a tip that i do is i make my own compost at home in a compost tumbler and you can make compost you can make your own compost in an apartment or your house so with an apartment you obviously can't make as much and if you have a house i will link to how i built a compost tumbler in the description and the total cost of that was 108 dollars so it's just a composting bin that spins adds air into the composting mix speeds up the process the only thing you have to do and for the build that i did was you have to manually spin it once a week roughly it's what i do tip number three is what direction your raised garden bed faces if you live in the northern hemisphere you want your raised garden bed to be facing south without anything blocking it and then if you live in the southern hemisphere you want your raised garden bed to be facing north and this allows for the most sun exposure which will be between six to eight hours a day that means not placing your raised garden bed behind a wall or behind a fence whenever you choose try to have it so whatever direction it's supposed to be facing is not going to be shaded for six to eight hours so tip number four is mulching your raised garden bed mulching does a few things it keeps moisture in your soil it stops the sun from ruining your soil from beating down on it and it stops infections from spreading from your soil onto your plants especially tomato plants this summer i made that exact mistake i ended up not mulching my soil where i planted my tomato plants and then the water splashed onto the stems onto the leaves and then i ended up getting some blight for your mulch you can use newspapers grass clippings straws leaves or pretty much any other organic material that can cover your soil if you look hard enough or you spend the time to look you can find free mulch on facebook or craigslist that's ended up that's how i ended up making some of my compost and mulching my garden at the same time was constantly searching on these free platforms you have to put your time in to be the first ones to get the the results or to get the mulch but it works out pretty good and remember mulching isn't just for your growing season you have to add it on for your growing season and for your off season it also protects your soil from the harsh winter climate especially if you're up north like i am an easy free mulch in the fall is to just pick up leaves pick up leaves for your neighbor they'll love you for it and use that on your garden that's a quick and easy mulch that i use so tip number five is spacing between your raised garden beds think about it this way you're going to be spending a ton of time in between your raised garden beds so you want to be able to move freely and to move comfortably in between them the ideal spacing between your raised garden beds is two to three feet and that is so you can bring equipment such as wheel barrels if you want to fill your raised garden bed or if you want to bring the wheelbarrow in and out for weeds whatever you want the only time you wouldn't do this is if you plan for your raised garden bed to be up against a wall or a fence and you don't need spacing just make sure it's facing the right direction so tip number six is not labeling what you plant in your raised garden bed so when i first started gardening i ended up planting spinach and lettuce and a couple other crops but i didn't label anything and because i was new i had no idea what i had planted so every single plant looked like a weed and weeds look like plants and it was just a total nightmare so especially if you're beginning make sure you label your crops it'll it'll help out quite a bit by labeling your garden you can keep track of what you planted the dates you planted them and then when you should harvest it makes gardening life much easier trust me so tip number seven is a wrong size raised garden bed many new gardeners build a raised garden bed that's massive absolutely massive they think that they can get more crops out of it but in reality it just makes their gardening experience suck with your width you want to comfortably be able to reach halfway across your raised garden bed without having to lean over too much if you have your raised garden bed against the wall or fence where you're only going to need to go to one side of it then keep your raised garden bed with that two feet and then if you're planning to go on both sides of it keep your width at four feet with your length you don't want it so long where it takes you forever to walk around your raised garden bed to get it on the other side six straight feet is the most common to walk around your raised garden bed but one other thing you guys have to think about is the height of your raised garden bed if you're placing your raised garden bed on concrete then stick to 10 to 12 inches that'll cover pretty much every single crop and if you're building over top of soil instead of concrete then you can get away with six to eight inches that'll leave enough deep rooted crops to go down into the existing soil further than your raised garden bed and will cover all angles so that's your dimensions for your raised garden bed tip number 13 is using the right material to build your raised garden beds recently i ended up building a greenhouse in my backyard when i went to home depot to buy the wood i was using to build i was absolutely blown away by how much wood has increased in price it's pretty much double from six months ago it might be a bit different where you guys are from but keep in mind each location wherever you guys are building your raised garden beds or doing gardening construction in general use material that's cheaper in your area most gardeners use wood in their raised garden bed mostly because it's the cheapest and the easiest to work with but other alternatives could be metal brick or stone with all three of those they don't decompose as frequent as wood they probably won't decompose in your lifetime so the two things you have to consider when choosing what material you want to use is your location so if it's really humid your temperature how low your temperature goes or how hot it goes or the location of your raised garden bed so if you're on a sloping hill and water seems to run down the hill then don't use wood at the very bottom don't use wood as you raise garden bed stone or brick they can get water in between the crevices and if it gets really cold brick can break stones can break metal is a very solid option but it also it tends to be the most expensive now for pressure treated wood if you have wood that's 2003 and older then don't use it there are toxins that will go into your garden and go into your vegetables it could be hazardous to you guys so stay safe all the wood that's pressed treated nowadays is supposed to be safe for your garden it's mostly going to be your guys discretion but what i would suggest is put a liner between your soil and your wood if you do use pressure treated wood the benefit to that is it does last a lot longer than regular wood but put a liner so the toxins can't seep if there are toxins it's all for debate but just stay safe tip number 14 is regular irrigation for your plants i will admit that i'm haven't always been the best at this when i first started gardening my schedule was getting up at 4 45 going to work and getting up an extra 15 minutes that early wasn't my happy times definitely wasn't i'm a morning person but not that early some of you guys might have the same problems and there are solutions for it but regardless consistent watering is very very important for your garden think about tomato plants right when they start producing their tomatoes they suck up a ton of water if you haven't been watering regularly it's kind of like your body where if you gain a bunch of weight really fast you're going to have stretch marks well with tomatoes the same thing if you don't if you don't water them don't water them and then you wire them all at the same time their tomatoes are actually going to have splits in them and it's pretty much stretch marks and those splits can rot the tomato the tomato looks not very good if you're going for like a farmer's market type of deal they don't look good so regular water watering very important if you are just starting out with gardening i get it you don't want to spend a whole bunch of money you want to see if you actually enjoy gardening but a good way to regulate your water is by using a drip irrigation and i'll link to my favorite type in the description below if you guys want to check it out so the last and final tip which is tip number 15 is to use season extensions on your raised garden bed what a season extension does is it keeps frost off of your plants and depending on your zone it might allow you to grow all year round by adding a season extension such as hoops a frost cover hinge hoop house a greenhouse or any of the other forms you can extend your growing season so one month before the last frost date and one month after thank you guys for sticking around to the end hope you guys enjoyed the video and you got something useful out of it out of the 15 tips you can at least put one into action next year if you guys have any questions or if you have any tips that i missed leave a comment in the description and i'll read it until next video

Channel: Devin The Gardener

Views: 181,867

Keywords: raised bed gardening, raised garden beds, raised garden bed mistakes, raised garden beds for beginners, raised garden bed diy, common raised garden bed mistakes, raised garden bed ideas, raised garden bed soil, raised garden beds cheap, raised garden bed direction, preppingtosurvive, gardening for beginners, raised garden bed, gardening, gardening mistakes, best raised garden bed, diy raised bed, raised bed mistakes

Id: 3X3YDaKh5Nw

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020