7 Beginner Raised Bed Garden Mistakes to Avoid

welcome to my raised bed vegetable garden 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 I do have several videos on how to build this type of raised bed and this type of raised bed now while both of those videos will tell you how to build raised beds that's not what this video is about this video is before you're setting up your raised beds what to think about so you don't make mistakes that I have and that other people have and you can get off to a great start this year without any mistakes the first mistake is making your bed too long or too wide my favorite width for a bed is 4T wide my favorite length is 8 ft long a 4x8 bed is great for almost everybody it's not too wide so from either side you can reach into the center or if you've got long arms like me you can reach almost all the way over it's also not too long if you build a 20ft bed every time you have to go around to the other side of that bed you got to walk all the way down all the way back another great thing about a 4x8 raised bed is that it saves money and waste you can get 8 foot pieces of lumber at pretty much any hardware store so 3 8ft pieces of lumber will build your bed one of those pieces you'll cut in half or have someone at the hardware store cut it in half for you those are the two ends of the bed and then the other two pieces are the sides now this isn't exactly beds but it does have to do with the beds and that is the space between them the paths now mine are a little more than 2 feet wide I just like to have them about the size of me turning sideways kneeling in the path so I don't have to get into some weird positions so when you're planning these things out literally sit down between the beds and see how much size you need the second mistake is to make your bed too shallow now that could be different for different people you want to build your bed tall enough based on your comfort level or what kind of substrate is under the raised bed so if you have a hard time bending over then you might want to build your beds up maybe 2 3 feet tall maybe more if you have good soil underneath the bed or at least not bad soil uh a 6in tall bed is totally fine if you have concrete like I used to have then you're going to need 12 to 14 in depth in your raised bed most vegetables want to send their Roots down about a foot and so if you have a 6-in tall raised bed and then you have soil underneath that that's fine if you don't you need to give them that foot above whatever that substrate is now here we have a gopher problem and so when I first built my beds I built them 6 in tall and I put hardware cloth underneath to keep the Gophers out totally does its job lasts for years I recommend it to anyone who has a gopher issue the problem I've had with these 6in deep beds with the Gopher wire underneath them is you can't plant you know long carrots or parsnips or anything like that they have to be short ones which isn't that big of a deal the other problem I had was trying to put in like uh a teepe trellis for beans let's say you only got that far to pound them in and that's not really far enough the wind took them over so in the three beds that I built last year to expand the width of the garden I actually doubled the height and now it's 12 in deep just two uh 2x sixes on top of each other and what's great about these simple framed raised beds is you can expand them or build them taller whenever you want to in fact over the next couple years I think I'm going to take all of my beds and put another 2x6 on top of them to make them all 12 in deep it's really easy to do you just stack the boards on top and put a 2x4 or a 4x4 some piece of scrap wood in the corner to screw into and maybe one more on each side somewhere in the middle of the bed just to keep them from shifting keep them from bowing out just keep them together the third mistake is to make your bed out of the wrong material now there's not a lot of wrong material in fact you don't even need material you can make your bed just piling up the soil about 6 to 12 in tall and planting directly into it you're still going to get the benefits of drainage and all that good stuff but you don't have to spend money on any kind of material to hold that in now I prefer the material because I like a neat garden and if you're like me and you want edges I I would say wood is the cheapest way to go I use Douglas fur you can use Redwood or Cedar those will be a little more expensive in the beginning but they'll probably last a little bit longer what you want to stay away from is compressed or treated lumber uh that may not be so good for your health now they're not as dangerous as they used to be when they were actually treated with arsenic now they're treated with something called copper ail it is not organic approved whether it leeches into your plants or not I don't know I'd just rather be safe than sorry and just replace mine in six or seven years versus however long you'll get out of the treated stuff to me it's a good tradeoff these beds here are made out of fabric the company that made these is Grassroots I'll put a link below the great thing about fabric beds is they root prune and that means as the roots hit the edge of the bed they detect the oxygen that's coming through that fabric and they actually split it's like pruning them when you prune or pinch out a plant it causes more branching same thing down below it causes more Roots so instead of wrapping themselves around you know you find a a pot-bound plant they just split split split and you get a nice healthy root system so I love these fabric beds I actually grew a whole bunch of sweet potatoes in them last year it was a huge harvest in just two 4x4 raised beds I think I got like 86 lbs of sweet potatoes out of those two beds and the last choice is metal rais beds these are great as well they come in lots of different designs they come in a lot of different heights and they're going to last a long time more than any of the other choices of course they're the most expensive option all right now it's time to fill the bed so the mistake there would be filling it with the wrong growing medium this is where most of the cost is going to be in your raised bed therefore it's probably what most people skimp on but it's really the most important thing we're growing and raised beds to get all the benefits one of which the main one is good drainage and good soil that's not compacted you want a light fluffy texture that you can just dig your hands down into you'd never be able to do that in the ground and so you never want to use garden soil to fill your raised beds with I know it's tempting especially if you got a lot of extra soil laying around but it doesn't work the same way when you fill it with that it's going to compact even some of the best soil maybe if you have the best LOM in the world it might work but do you really want to take that chance so clay soil of course not that's never going to work sandy soil that would never work either you would lose all the water it would just drain right through so you're going to want to use a potting soil or a raised bed mix there's some great bulk options if you have a mushroom farm near you you know look it up a lot of times they give their mushroom compost away for free you just got to transport it and shovel it but it's free so like I said the main cost of filling a raised bed is the soil now if you've got a 3ft tall raised bed that's where it can get real expensive but you only have to worry about the top 12 in having that good potting soil raised bed mix compost the rest of it can be filled with other types of organic material organic meaning they will eventually break down so you can start on the bottom with some large uh tree branches limbs go up with a layer of smaller branches up with another layer of Twigs then leaves get smaller as you go to the top and over the years all of that will break down and eventually you'll have good soil all the way throughout now just be prepared with this method it will sink a bit every year not a lot and you'll have to top it up which you have to do anyway we'll get to that but it does make filling a raised bed a brand new raised bed a lot cheaper one thing I would warn you on is do not use grass clippings to fill your raised bed unless you want a lovely sewage smell every time you water for at least 2 months ask me how I know the fifth mistake I just hinted at it uh is not refreshing the soil you're going to notice every year no matter if you've got it filled with branches and twigs and leaves or if it's all uh compost or potting soil every year you are going to lose a little bit and it could be from erosion settling you know pulling out plants and the the soil goes with the roots so every year in spring or fall or both I do both I add another inch or two of good compost or potting soil or raised bed mix just to the top I don't mix it in it's going to do a few things it's going to first of all keep that root run as deep as it needs to be second thing it's going to do is actually make a blanket over the soil that was there the previous year and that's going to help bury some of maybe the spores for bacteria diseases things like that it just puts a nice physical uh blanket between that and your next crop it also just reinvigorates the soil with new organic matter so all those great beneficial bacteria and bugs and worms can start to pull that down break it down and get it down into the soil the six mistake is not mulching now mulching keeps the weeds down it keeps the moist in the soil for me in a dry climate it is invaluable but not fighting weeds all summer that's pretty good too and I water with drip irrigation and my my mulch goes over that so none of that moisture ever sees the light a day does not evaporate from the Sun it goes straight into the soil and stays there if you move mulch away you can see that the soil underneath is wet whereas right next to it same bed no mulch the soil is dry 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 mulch is also yet another blanket between the soil and your plants and it's organic so it's eventually going to break down and be taken into the soil now make sure when you plant and you have mulch you move the mulch aside plant in the soil and put the mulch back you never want to uh bury mulch in the soil because that will start to Rob nitrogen from the soil as it breaks down so your plants have enough nitrogen to get what they need if you have a snail or slug issue I would stay away from mulching with things like straw or pine needles um mainly because they get in there and they can hide I had a horrible time I put straw down as mulch and our wet season is our winter so in the winter I put straw down as mulch and I had never had that much of a problem with snails and slugs they were everywhere the seventh mistake is not protecting your beds in in the winter now a lot of gardeners skip this step because it's fall you're tired you're burnt out from a long hot summer and you just want to forget about it until spring that's a big mistake if you have cold Icy Winters you need to protect the soil if you just have rainy Winters you need to protect from erosion there's lots of ways to do that mulching is one of them a nice thick layer of mulch over the winter does wonders I'll put a link below to a video I did a couple years ago on how to winterize beds both in cold climate Winters and mild climate Winters but you can also grow cover crops cover crops are just something it's a blanket of green over your beds The Roots keep the soil intact and as the plants die if they if they freeze they will die they will be taken into the soil like a green um green manure so you're holding your soil in place and you're actually reinvigorating it with a cover crop if you live in a cold climate you might want to use something like winter ridee that can hand handle the cold crimson clover is another one hairy vetch a lot of people think of these things as weeds and they can be if your climate gets cold enough in the winter to just kill it you don't have to worry about it but if it doesn't and they remain and they start to go to flour you can have a problem with weeds but there's a real simple solution don't let them flour as soon as you see the flower buds forming just mow them down leave all those cuting right there on the surface they'll be taken into the soil to reinvigorate it all right that was seven raised bed mistakes now if you want to learn how to make the raised beds that I showed you like I have in my garden click this video right here for a simple stepbystep tutorial I'll see you next time

Channel: Next Level Gardening

Views: 1,028,072

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: iFOGDQ0o3rc

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2024