How to DESIGN a RAISED BED GARDEN: 10 SIMPLE STEPS

raised beds are a popular option for gardening and my favorite way to garden in today's video i'm going to share my best tips for designing a raised bed garden that not only uses the space effectively but is beautiful as well but if we haven't met before my name is angela from growing in the garden and i love to share garden inspiration and helpful tips so you can be successful in your own garden the first step and probably the most important is to choose the best location for your garden no matter how beautiful your raised garden is it will not grow if it doesn't get enough sunlight so choose an area in your yard that gets plenty of sunlight ideally at least six to eight hours of sun if you have a choice look for an area that gets morning sun and a little bit of afternoon shade that's the best spot to garden in if you don't have a spot with morning sun and afternoon shade look for the area in your yard that gets the most sunlight you can always add shade to your garden but you can't add sunlight other areas to consider for your location are that the area is nice and level or that you can make it level that there's relatively good drainage in the area and that you have access to water choose the location of your garden carefully once you have an idea of the dimensions of what your garden will be you're ready for the next step the next thing you want to do is to maximize the available space for your raised bed garden so as you're thinking about what size of beds to install here are a few important considerations the beds should be no wider than four feet across so that you can reach into the center beds that are up against walls should be two feet or less keeping the beds at four feet or less means that you can reach in the garden from both sides and you won't ever need to step into your garden stepping on your garden causes soil compaction and having the beds be four feet wide eliminates the need to step on your beds completely the length of your bed doesn't matter it can be however long you'd like it to be however far you're willing to walk around that bed ideally the depth of your raised beds is between 12 to 24 inches deep so as you're designing your raised bed garden you want to maximize the use of how many beds you can have but you also want to make sure that you're allowing enough room between the beds it's tempting to fill every square inch with raised beds but it's important to have enough room between the garden beds to allow access for wheelbarrows to allow the plants to grow and sprawl which they're going to do and you want to allow at least two feet between beds three to four feet is even better i think the sweet spot is about three feet between each bed that gives you enough room for those plants to sprawl a little bit and have nice walkways between the beds once you have your overall design in place with ideas for bed placement and where your rows are going to be it's important to think about where you're going to add some vertical elements to your garden vertical gardening has so many advantages so many plants love to grow up it gets plants up off the ground gives them plenty of sunlight and air flow to maximize sunlight you want to put permanent trellises on the north edges of the garden beds or next to a fence or wall you can also use vertical elements to add shade if you live in a hot climate so use thoughtful placement when you're designing where to put your vertical elements so that you can make sure that they are adding extra space and not blocking the sunlight for existing plants so once you've thought through the design of your raised bed garden and your vertical elements spend some time in your garden with that plan in mind visualizing that to see if it will work sometimes what works on paper doesn't work in real life spend some time in the space to see if that plan will work when i was planning a new garden area the sketch that i had seemed to be just right but when i got into the space it was actually a little bit too crowded and so i had to rethink my plan one thing that i've done that has been helpful is to cut out the size of my raised beds out of weed cloth and then it's easy to position that weed cloth within the garden to help you decide on bed placement it's much easier to move weed cloth around in the shape of raised beds than it is to actually move raised beds and especially raised beds that are already filled the more time you spend during this step ensuring that your plan is correct the happier you will be at the end with the overall design so once you have your design in place and you know what size of beds you need it's important to decide on the style of beds that you would like research different types of beds and building materials so you understand your options if you're making raised beds out of wood and understand the different types of wood beds made with hardwoods like redwood or cedar are going to last much longer than beds made with pine my advice is to buy the best materials you can afford and build as you can rather than building out your whole garden with less expensive wood that's why that overall plan is so important you can get beds in place one at a time and it's actually a good idea to start small as you're building your garden then you can add more beds as your experience grows once you have the beds in place spend some time in your garden before you fill them make sure that you like the feel of the garden is there enough room between the beds did it turn out how you would like now is the time to tweak the design spend time installing your beds correctly make sure that the ground is level make sure that the distances between beds are even all of this time and effort in getting the design just right will pay off in the end as your garden bed will look so much better if things are level and evenly spaced when your beds are in place and before you fill them up it's an excellent time to install your watering system putting your watering system in place before you fill the beds means that you can run the drip lines up inside of the beds rather than on the outsides of the beds getting your watering system in place as part of the design process ensures that the beds will have water going to them and you make any changes you need to or bury water lines or anything like that i use a watering grid from garden in minutes in all of my raised beds it is by far my favorite way to water it's very easy to set up you run the individual lines to each bed i have one main line coming off of my sprinkler box that runs down the middle of the bed and then individual lines going into each bed that connect to the garden grids and each bed also has a valve where i can control the water pressure this makes watering my raised beds super easy and very efficient you can also have that main line be connected to a water hose you can also install a different kind of drip system once you have the watering system in place double check your bed placement the beds may have moved a little bit now you're ready to fill up your beds with the raised bed mix made for your garden beds regular garden soil is too dense and too heavy for raised beds i like to fill my beds with a mixture of 1 3 compost 1 3 either peat moss or coconut coir and vermiculite or perlite that mixture is ideal for raised bed garden if you want to learn more about that type of soil i have a blog post and a youtube video all about it take a little bit of time to sketch out and make a plan for what you'd like to plant make sure that you're putting plants that take full sun in areas that get lots of sunlight spend a little bit of time deciding on crop placement vegetables that like to grow vertically should be grown near a trellis and plants that sprawl should be grown on the edge of the bed so they have room to grow now it's time to plant this is what you've been waiting for find a planting guide meant for your area and get planting choose things your family likes to eat and enjoy your new garden taking the time to carefully go through each one of these steps will help your garden be productive and beautiful a well-designed raised bed garden adds beauty and bounty to your yard thank you so much for watching

Channel: Growing In The Garden

Views: 423,929

Keywords: how to, how to build a raised bed, how to build a raised garden bed, how to build a raised bed garden, how to make, how to garden, how to plan a garden, how to grow a garden, how to start a garden, how to make a planter, how to fill a raised bed, how to make a raised bed, how to build a garden bed, how to build a hoophouse, how to build a garden box, how to plant a tropical garden, how to build a strong raised bed, how to make a square foot garden

Id: UZ90rjgIDSI

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 04 2022