Why make a raised bed garden?
The soil here in Lehigh Acres is made up of sand. Nutrients must be added to the sand. The easiest way I know to do this is with a raised bed. Since a raised bed is never walked on, the soil is loose and allows plant roots to expand more that in compacted soil.
Lots of gardening articles recommend a raised bed of 4 foot x 8 foot. However, I have difficulty with the 4 foot width and prefer my beds to be 3 foot x 8 foot. Make the width even less or the height more if will make your work easier. That way you will be more willing to care for your garden.
The outside of the bed can be formed with recycled wood pallets, cement blocks, rocks, wood, bricks, bails of straw, bamboo... the sky is the limit. There is still controversy over treated lumber/railroad ties leaching chemicals (arsenic/creosote) in raised beds for edibles.
See this article by Fine Gardening for details. Choosing on the side of caution, I won't use treated wood. Some plastics leach chemicals when heated. There is some controversy over different numbered plastics being worse than others. Wikipedia says this:
"On the market are also prefab raised garden bed solutions which are made from long lasting polyethylene that is UV stabilized and Food Grade so it isn't going to leach undesirable chemicals into your soil and it won't deteriorate in the elements. A double skinned wall provides an air pocket of insulation that minimizes the temperature fluctuations and drying out of the soil in the garden bed."My husband creates wood bed frames for me. We are experimenting with both pine and cedar to see how long each lasts. He purchases three 2" x 6" x 8' pieces of wood for the sides. Two are used as is for the long sides of the bed, the third piece is cut into two 2" x 6" x 3' pieces for the smaller sides. He also purchases a 4" x 4" x 8' piece of wood that he cuts into four 6" long pieces for each corner of the bed. Using exterior deck screws, he screws the bed together with the 4" x 4" pieces in each inside corner.
Place cardboard down over the area that the bed will go then lay the bed frame on top. The cardboard kills many weeds and the cardboard breaks down into the soil. If you need cardboard ask at any grocery store and they will gladly give it to you. Add and mix peat moss, compost (see previous post on Lee County compost), well rotted manure, anything that will decompose, and/or shredded paper. This is one place not to skimp. If needed to fill the bed to the brim, add sand/soil from another part of the yard and mix well again.
NOTE: do not use dairy products, meat products, or human/cat/dog waste in the bed. More details on this in another post.Recently I have made my beds with a large pot fitted into the center. I put kitchen scraps in it and water the bed through the pot in the center. There are flies and bugs involved because of the decomposing materials, but watering into the pot leaches the "good stuff" to the plants growing in the bed.
Planting a raised bed with hand tools is very easy using an intensive "square foot" gardening method. More of this in an upcoming post.
The beds are watered and fertilized with fish emulsion from Ace hardware on Homestead. Only once after watering, with this fish based fertilizer, did I have a raccoon dig a hole in a bed trying to get to what he thought was a buried fish.
When I am super broke and want more plants, I use a bag of compost and grow plants right in the bag. While the bags of so-called compost from Walmart or Ace are not real compost, they work for smaller plants that don't demand a lot of nutrients such as lettuce, spinach, chard, endive, basil, small radishes, leaf celery, parsley, and beet greens. Make and X cut in the top of the bag and tuck the flaps under and punch holes in the bottom for drainage. "Bag" beds must be watched and watered when needed. The sun dries them out very quickly. After the bags are used for one crop, mix them into a new bed with some "real" compost.
Someday I would love to have raised beds that look like the photo to the left. Directions are found
here.
