Tips In Raised Bed Gardening: Happy Soil and Plants
When you’ve finished building a bed, whether it’s from a kit or something you whipped up from scratch, you can begin preparing for actual raised bed gardening. Though your bed is no doubt in place, it’s a big empty spot at the moment. Your next step is where the fun begins.
By using proper soil, keeping disease and weeds down and watering properly, you can start a strong raised bed garden that will perform for years to come.
Managing Soil: pH Levels
One of the safer techniques for making a raised bed garden is also a simple one. Use a mixture of one quarter yard soil, three quarters compost and sand. This puts a solid base to start your gardening and should prompt some nice growth. Always keep track of your soil’s pH levels, too. If it’s overly alkaline, nothing will grow.
Kill All The Weeds
The structure of your raised bed should make weeds a minor annoyance, but sometimes bad luck will strike. Put mulch of an organic sort over the top of your bed. This can help cut down on weeds drastically, without introducing potentially harmful chemicals.
If that doesn’t work, try products for weed guarding to make sure those pesky weeds stay away. If this still doesn’t stop them, don’t worry too much. They’re simple to get rid of, and remember gardening is ongoing work. There are going to be setbacks occasionally.
Keep The Water Appropriate
Overdoing the water is just as harmful as starving your plants, because long periods of wetness can help promote disease and general bad health in your garden. Do your watering by hand, keeping the water on the areas in which the plants are buried, but not straying to the surrounding areas.
Alternatively, you can pick up one of those irrigation systems. These handy contraptions use a dripping technology to water enough but not too much. Whatever you do, don’t just hose down your plants.
Take Care Of Your Raised Bed
Though raised bed gardening actually requires little maintenance, there are still things you have to stay on top of as a gardener. First, obviously you need to water your plants as necessary, being careful not to overdo it. Next, try turning the soil over periodically, adding in new organic matter as you go.
If your plants should come down with disease, empty the bed and change out the soil using that same soil/sand/compost mix I mentioned earlier. Also keep an eye on the physical makeup of your garden, just in case it has started coming apart.
Raised bed gardening is a simple form of gardening that allows people with little or no experience to indulge themselves in a beautiful accessory for their lawn that will attract attention for years.
The tips above will keep your garden nice and safe — both for the plants, and for you.
They’re beautiful and they cultivate delicious vegetables — do you need more reason to install raised garden beds in your yard today? Take a look at raised bed gardening and how you can transform your garden into the gossip topic of the neighborhood. Buy raised bed gardening kits, tools and accessories only from verified web resources.
