5 Hacks to Grow Your Favorite Plants on A Plant Bed
By Joy Gomez
Author bio: My world is made up of codes. It is the central element that drives my universe. I am a self-taught, process-driven programmer with a creative bent of mind. Since I was an engineering student, I dreamed of creating something unique. To satiate my creative appetite, I created Field Promax to follow my drive.
Not enough space to grow your favorite plants in plant beds? Managing your garden is proving to be hard work? Use a raised plant bed to bring a bountiful garden to life. Here are the best-kept secrets of gardening with a raised bed for you!
Imagine waking up to delightful blossoms in front of your house or preparing a tasty meal with vegetables from your own backyard kitchen garden! How lovely does that sound? If you love gardening, surely you have been nurturing these dreams for a long time now! But some of us cannot live that dream simply because we don’t have the space for it.
Don’t worry! You can now live your dream, even with the limited space available. All you need is one (or maybe a few!) raised beds.
These container gardens are loaded with lightweight, nutrient-rich soil and can easily generate twice the yield in half the space. They're also easier to maintain because they're in an enclosed space raised above ground level—no tilling or stopping to pluck weeds.
Metal raised beds can often be more productive than ground beds because the soil is not as compacted, has a better drainage system, and heats earlier at the beginning of the year, allowing plants to begin growing earlier in the season. Raised beds are also sometimes easier to manage, especially for people with restricted mobility, and have less recurrent weed pressure in general.
In this article, you will find some amazing ideas to grow your favorite plants throughout the year. So, read on!
Find the Perfect Material and Design
Material matters! The best raised garden beds are made of water-resistant and rot-resistant materials. So, if you want a perfect one for your garden, make sure it is made of concrete blocks, retaining wall blocks, landscaping blocks, or landscaping timbers/ rot-resistant exterior woods, such as redwood, cedar, and black locust. However, the best choice is always metal raised garden beds. Also, see that your raised bed has the perfect soil mixture for the plants you wish to grow.
Better yet, find the best gardening company in your area and order the best-suited raised bed and soil mixture for your garden. This way, you will have less to worry about and can instead focus on other important things. For example, taking care of your plants.
Be Careful of Spacing
As well as planning your raised bed’s design, material, and size, take your raised bed’s width into consideration. Make sure they are not too wide. You should be able to reach every plant easily without overbalancing or stretching too much.
You should also take care of how close each plant is to its neighbor. Don’t make it too crowded, either. The ideal spacing allows a wheelbarrow to pass through along the path between two plants. You might want to keep this rule of thumb in mind while sowing. This also helps when you are putting in mulch or weeding.
Use Mulch
The lightweight, nutrient-rich soil in a raised garden bed is ideal for root growth. However, it tends to dry out if not protected from the harsh elements.
Mulch—a layer of organic materials such as shredded dry leaves, hardwood chips, grass clippings, straw, or sawdust—should be applied over the soil to keep it cool and reduce evaporation while also inhibiting the growth of weed seeds. You can also buy bagged commercial mulch from a good gardening store. Spread mulch in a uniform two-inch layer and lightly push down for the best results.
Furthermore, try to plant a cover crop after each growing season to increase soil fertility. Growing crimson clover, annual ryegrass, hairy vetch, etc. will add more nutrients to your soil and also protect it from the harsh winter. Come spring, dig them into the raised bed soil and turn them into mulch.
Don’t Skip Out on Compost
While mulch is an excellent element to protect and enhance your garden soil, compost is a must-have for raised garden beds. If you want your plants and veggies to be in top shape, don’t forget to top-dress the raised bed with about two inches of compost, preferably organic, when you first plant the veggies. During mid-season, reapply compost once again when you pull out the spring harvest. This helps add nutrients back into the soil and retain fertility.
Use A Quick-Connect Garden Hose
Quick-connect off-and-on nozzles can save you a lot of time in the garden while making watering much easier. Don't waste any more time struggling to thread sprinklers or spray nozzles properly onto your hoses.
Arrange Plants by Height
When it's time to harvest, you wouldn't want to reach through a plant and mess it up to reach another. For example, if you need to reach through some tall tomato plants to pull up a radish hidden behind them, things are not going to be convenient for any of you. So arrange the plants so that the tallest ones, such as okra or corn, grow along the middle section of the raised bed, medium-height plants, such as peppers, grow on either side, and shorter plants, such as carrots and radishes, grow along the edges.
Water the Roots
Water garden plants in your raised beds from the ground level instead of using a sprayer or sprinkler on top of them. Watering from above with a sprayer or sprinkler might moisten the leaves. Continuously wet leaves raise the risk of fungal diseases. for example, Septoria leaf spot, which can wipe off an entire crop. Consider wrapping a soaker hose lightly around the plants' bases. You can also consider a drip system instead. Do you know when is the best time to water your raised beds? Click here to see the answer.
Wrapping Up
Traditional in-ground garden beds are great, but with raised garden beds, you can practically do wonders with little effort. It allows you to grow more plants in much less space, tailor the garden soil more efficiently, and prevent weeds from spreading out too much. Furthermore, raised beds also make harvesting and preparing the soil for the next season much easier. It lets you garden without fighting roots and stones, needs no tilling, and even prepares the soil to plant sooner.
Conclusion
As you can see, the advantages of raised garden beds are practically endless. So, what more are you waiting for? Get ready to grow veggies and flowers all summer! Just follow these simple hacks and see your garden blooming and blushing with no extra effort on your end.
If you still think the task is going to be difficult for you, don’t shy away from consulting a gardening service. But remember, before you zero in on a gardening professional, make sure they are the right choice. To confirm, check whether they are experienced, have good reviews, offer post-sale support, and, most importantly, use digital tools like field service management software and mobile apps in their operations.
