raised bed gardening

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After reading all the positive words about raised beds, I'm seriously considering going that route. My question is this: how large of a garden can you have with raised beds. I've always imagined beds for smaller gardens and mine is about 60 X 70. Is this feasible? Thanks for any advice. Glynnis

-- glynnis (gabbycab@aol.com), January 05, 2000

Answers

Sure, you can build as many raised beds as suits your situation. We have 10-4X20' beds and still use an additional area for corn, beans & potatoes, that is about 75X100'

-- Bob Henderson (redgate@echoweb.net), January 05, 2000.

Our garden is quite large and is all raised beds.Some have sides and some don't.Our problem has been getting control of the quack grass,but what we do is every year we mulch an area designated for a bed,and work up a site that has been mulched for a year and make a couple of new beds.This is a lot easier than trying to make a large area into beds and keep it weed free all at once the first year.If you do it gradually you don't wear yourself oout on it.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@transport.com), January 05, 2000.

I have 10 raised beds that are 4'X 16'. We live in the woods and this works great for us. Can't work the ground with all the roots etc. You can pack a lot more plants in raised beds than in a normal garden. Also, you can trellis vining plants like cantalope and cukes. I am going to plant strawberries this coming year. The best thing I like about my beds are less weeding. Sometimes I just saunter around the beds admiring them, and pick out a weed or two -- it's that easy. Make sure your compost is well-cooked and you are not adding weed seeds and you'll do great.

-- Mary Fraley (kmfraley@orwell.net), January 06, 2000.

Hi My beds are 4 ft x 25 ft which equals 100 square feet. This works well when adding lime, bonemeal, etc. because the recommended usage amounts are usually given in 50 or 100 square feet. I find that four feet widths are convenient when harvesting or tending.

-- Marci (ajourend@libby.org), January 06, 2000.

We have done raised beds for 20 years or so. No question about it, they do enhance yields but at what cost? Approaching 60 and looking for an easier way, we tried container (5 gallon bucket) gardening. Wish we had discovered it long ago! You can raise in 20 such containers all the vegetables that two people can eat. We put the buckets on sheets of galvanized metal roofing (no weeds) and cut circles of perforated cardboard to fit down (1") inside the rim. Fill the bucket full of compost, put in the set, cut a hole in the center of the cardboard and you don't have to do anything but water them twice a week, fertilize every third week and harvest the fruit. No weeds, many fewer bugs (because the plants are off the ground?) and unbelievable yields. With frames made of concrete-reinforcing mesh, clear plastic and a couple of 55 gallon drums full of water, we are able to ignore the weather year 'round here in Florida. Try this system with just 4 or 6 buckets for one season. I'll bet you will use it as much as we do. We still use the large field for crops like corn, peanuts and watermelon but we don't depend that much on these for food. Good luck, John and Pat

-- john and pat james (jjames@n-jcenter.com), January 08, 2000.


The size of the garden is only limited by the number of beds you are willing to put together. I control weed problems between mine by saving paper feed sacks, newspapers, etc., and spreading them out in the paths, right on top of whatever was growing there. Add a layer of sawdust to keep things neat, and there you go, a weed free zone.

-- Connie Christoffer (litlgaea@cs.com), February 17, 2000.

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