Start a vegetable garden with raised beds, and you will find that you will enjoy gardening more. When you plant vegetables using this method, you will make it easier to not only grow the vegetables but take care of them as well. As a result, you will get a much larger harvest.
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Advantages of a Vegetable Garden with Raised Beds
One of the greatest advantages when growing vegetables in raised beds are the fact that you can save a lot of space over conventional gardening.
If you plant in rows, as most people do in conventional gardening, about half of the garden space is taken up by the paths between each of the rows.
That means there is a lot of wasted space. With raised beds, you save a lot of space.
As well, you can set more plants per square foot than you could if you were planning in rows. As a result, you will be able to harvest a lot more vegetables from the same amount of space.
Another unmistakable advantage is the fact that you will use a lot more good soil than you might have in a conventional garden.
In a conventional garden, you will have to mix your compost in with your tilled soil.
This means you are going to have to first use a tiller to loosen up the soil before planting.
After that, you have the back-breaking task of turning the compost into soil. Unfortunately, this can take a very long time and is hard work.
When you have a raised bed garden, you can simply use compost as your soil!
You do have the choice of tilling the soil underneath the raised beds, or you can leave it alone.
Most plants will grow without having to till the soil underneath. You will be able to just fill your raised beds with compost and then plant directly into it.
This is certainly much easier than turning compost into existing soil.
How to Plant Vegetable Garden with Raised Beds
Raised beds are generally about four feet wide and six feet long. They are generally made using a wooden frame set on the ground.
As well they are generally spaced about eighteen to twenty-four inches apart in order to be able to walk between the frames so you can care for the plants.
As well they are usually separated into one-foot sections. Each section will hold a certain number of plants based on the size of the mature plant.
If you are planting larger plants, you may need an entire one-foot by one-foot square.
However, if you are planting smaller ones, you will be able to get four, eight, or even sixteen per one-foot square.
You can plant up to sixteen radish or carrot plants in a single square foot.
As a way to divide your raised bed, you should section off one-by-one-foot areas.
Then you can section those off into smaller sections based on the size of the plants you want to grow.
For larger plants such as tomatoes or broccoli, you would simply plant one in each square foot.
Should you want to plant lettuce, you can fit four per square foot.
All you do is divide each square foot into four equal squares.
For radish or carrot plants you just need to divide each section into sixteen equal squares.
Once space has been divided using either a string or small pieces of wood, you can plant your seeds or seedlings in the center of each of the sections.
Vegetable Garden with Raised Beds Video:
Another Benefit of a Vegetable Garden with Raised Beds
Another fabulous benefit of using raised bed gardening is the fact that you won’t have to deal with as many weeds.
Since you will be using fresh compost or soil mix in the raised bed, you won’t have to worry about weeds as you would if you were planting in soil that has been tilled.
Any weeds that do turn up in the garden will be easy to spot and pull out of the bed.
Most people find that they are able to care for their vegetable garden much easier when they use raised beds.
Since you are going to have to deal with fewer weeds and having the plants closer together, it means that you will find that gardening is no longer a chore.
Using raised garden beds is a great way to get more vegetables out of the space you have available, and you will get to enjoy gardening even more!
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