Adventures in Gardening: The Pleasures of Raised Bed Gardening

Narration provided by Wondervox.

By Mark McNease

Gardening is good for the soul as well as the soil. There’s something about planting and watching your vegetables or flowers grow that gives you a feeling of accomplishment.

I’m in the process of renovating our vegetable garden. We have a large back lawn, and when we first moved here permanently from New York City, I wanted to create a real vegetable garden, not the sad attempts we’d made when we were only here on weekends. I ordered three wooden raised bed kits, comprised of six 4×4 rectangles. I then immediately made the mistake of putting two of these adjacent to each other, as 8×4 beds, forming one large 8×8 box. That would be all right, if you never needed to weed or prune or in any other way work within the growing area. I had the sense to put the third long box several feet away, so you could walk between them.

Three years passed. The wood rotted. The soil wasn’t producing very well. And this year I decided to redo the whole thing. The rotted wood has all been pulled out, but the mounds of dirt remain. I’m 65, I don’t shovel snow in the winter, having read stories every year about people my age suffering heart attacks while they shovel their walkways. I’m not interested in dying in my garden, like Vito Corleone in The Godfather. If the dirt had to be moved, it would be by someone else.

Then I had a vision: metal sides that could be pushed into the existing dirt. Voila! It worked. And now I can reestablish the garden without the mistakes I made the first time.

Gardening is good for the soul as well as the soil. There’s something about planting and watching your vegetables or flowers grow that gives you a feeling of accomplishment. We live in ‘the country,’ a rural part of New Jersey where there are more trees and deer than people. Creating this garden makes me feel like I’m part of the landscape. And each year I promise to do better, garden a littler harder, and enjoy tomatoes, lettuce, and peppers that grew to harvest in my back yard.

About Raised Bed Gardening

Raised bed gardening is a technique of growing plants in beds that are elevated above the ground level, usually by using wooden frames (been there), bricks or stones (never done that), or in my new configuration, metal. Raised beds several advantages over traditional in-ground gardening: better drainage, weed control, soil quality, and accessibility. This last one is important for older people. It’s easer to work with a garden that’s been raised closer to you, rather than you have to get down to it. It’s not elevated that much – just a foot or so – but it makes a difference.

The other big advantage of raised beds is not having to dig up existing dirt in the ground. I was able to put the beds over the grass that was already there, and fence it in to keep the deer our.

Raised beds can also extend the growing season, as the soil warms up faster and stays warmer longer than the ground.

Raised bed gardening is suitable for a variety of plants, including vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruits. The size, shape, and height of the beds can be customized according to the space available, the gardener’s preferences, and the needs of the plants. The beds should be filled with a mixture of topsoil, compost, and organic matter to provide nutrients and moisture retention for the plants.

As you’d expect raised bed gardens require maintenance and care just like any garden: watering, fertilizing, mulching, and pruning. The beds should be watered regularly, especially during dry periods, to prevent the soil from drying out and cracking. NOTE: Water seeps down and out. In hot weather, the beds can become dry in just a day or two. Fertilizers should be applied sparingly – too much fertilizer can damage the plants and pollute the ground. Mulching helps reduce evaporation, suppress weeds, and moderate soil temperature. And of course pruning to improve air circulation, prevent diseases, and encourage flowering and fruiting.

Setting up our garden remains one of my best accomplishments since we moved to our little house in the woods, and I’m looking forward to giving it another go.