Did you know?
Tomatoes are an excellent source of vitamin C, with one medium tomato providing 40% of the recommended daily amount.
Benefits of a raised garden
- It’s an excellent way to grow plants, especially if you are new to gardening
- Raises your plants to a more comfortable height, making it easier to plant, inspect and care for
- Allows you to better control nutrition of the soil by creating a barrier between the bed and natural soil
- You can plant earlier in the spring because the sun warms the bed faster than the ground
- By using cloth or netting, it’s easy to control pests, temperature and moisture
- Provides drainage, protecting your plants from overwatering
- Fairly simple to build and moveable
Building options
Raised garden beds can be made from several different materials including lumber, concrete block, basins or bathtubs. Building with wood is the most common as it’s fast and easy. Concrete edgers are another material that is both easy to work with and inexpensive.
Garden beds can be a variety of sizes. The width of the bed should be no more than three feet so you can reach your plants from both sides. The length can be as large as you like, but smaller boxes grant you greater access to your plants. The depth should be between ten inches and three feet. Beyond these guidelines, a garden bed can be a wide variety of shapes, sizes and materials, and besides making gardening easier, can add as much character to your yard as the plants themselves.
