Gardening in Raised Beds with Square Foot Gardening

The How Do Gardener ^ | 1/26/2019 | The How Do Gardener

[orsonwb]

Garden anywhere with raised beds in 80% less space, with only 2% of the work, and using only 10% of the water required with traditional garden beds. WATCH THE VIDEO...

[orsonwb]

Thought this video had a lot of good information in it. Not sure if I want to commit to the upfront cost of using raised beds, but the video does give a detailed cost breakdown of how much beds cost using different materials.

[BenLurkin]

gardening ping

[stars & stripes forever]

upfront cost of using raised beds

Wooden ones attract ants and rot after a few years of use.

[CincyRichieRich]

I have done this and it works well. As long as each year you rotate around the garden. One word of advice, and I am no expert, over a few years of doing this I’ve learned do not grow zucchinis just leave them out of your plans they are dirt cheap and they take over and hide everything and cause other vegetables to rot.

[nesnah]

Paging Mel Barthomew, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

[cherry]

my garden space basically was pine forest that had been logged....the ground was hard,sandy....so raised beds are the way to go....

my husband built the initial ones.....probably need to be replaced soon....

but I also use anything I can find that is raised....half metal barrels are great...I have an old men's urinal that I put flowers in.....store bought very large plastic pots....and large wooden 4x4x3 apple crate like boxes my husband got from his old job....I filled the bottom with pine cones and then started filling them up with compost, store bought dirt, etc....

its easier to control weeds in the boxes/containers....you do have to work on keeping the space between the boxes weed free.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I did the raised the bed thing, and the problem with it is you are fertilizing and watering weeds along with your crop. You spend all your time weeding.

I got rid of my big raised beds and use 5-gallon buckets as raised beds instead.

Weeding is easy. Anything not in a bucket is weed-whacked.

And you aren't watering weeds, because you only water the buckets.

[RightGeek]

Interesting idea. Do you punch holes in the buckets?

[folkquest]

Nice! Ping

[Georgia Girl 2]

I get way more out of my raised bed and containers than I ever did out of a garden.

[mrsmith]

Everything I read says 5 gallon bucket isn’t big enough for tomatoes.
Do you limit yourself to smaller varieties?

[FreedomPoster]

I’d think you’d have to.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Bookmark

[Sacajaweau]

I've just been building up my beds. I draw a plan of my rows and go to it.

I did manage to buy 2 trellises at Lowes for $6 ea...reg 24.99. Can't wait to use those for my cukes and peas.

[piasa]

You can get fabric raised bed containers very cheap that allow ample room for tomatoes. They sag after a while but get you through the season and are reusable.

[kingu]

We used these:

Pine 2x6 boards, we cut them to 4', but there's nothing to say you can't make them 2' long or 6' long (anything longer than 6' doesn't really remain stable without an actual concrete footer with rebar coming out the top.) For each of the 4' x 4' by 12" or 24" raised bed (it's in two heights), we have PVC pipe coming up to an on/off valve and an adapter to go from 3/4" PVC to 1/4" drip irrigation line, which then t's off in 5 separate drip irrigation soaker lines that go across the bed.

All of it is connected up to a single PVC header with a pressure regulator and filter and hooks up to the hose for irrigating the beds as desired.

Glad we did the individual valves on each (sub) raised bed (front is 12" deep, back is 24" deep, total 4' wide, 8' deep, plus the width of the blocks) as sometimes you need to take a bed down for planting and still want to water the other beds. We got an additional set of blocks for each bed (3 high in the front, 5 high in the back) to use as guides to put in our chicken-wire fences made with 2"x2" framing (front fences are taller than back fences) to keep some animals out of the beds, and the fence frames can be moved to any bed.

We also have our 'covered wagon' raised bed made out of 2"x12" pine with PVC bent over into a hoop and shade cloth across the top. That's for higher PH level plants like our lingonberries.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Pie-plate sized hole in the bottom so the roots can go anywhere they wish.

[piasa]

I like using old leaky 4’ wide plastic kiddie pools for zuchini and lettuce

[heavy metal]

if locally available try hay bales instead...
plenty of information on the internet...

[RightGeek]

Thanks - sounds great