Gardening Information - Raised Flower Beds
If your like most gardening enthusiast that I know, you like a wide variety of plants. What if you find you have areas of ground that just don't have the drainage needed for some plants? If you want plants that require better drainage you may run into conflict ie: the rapid death of your plant. The answer is a raised garden bed.
If you want to test your soil just dig a hole in the desired garden plot some say 10 inched deep but I go with a 2x2x2 foot hole that is two feet square. Fill the hole with water over night then fill it again in the morning if you have water standing by afternoon you should consider raised flower beds.
Raised flower beds allow you to put in the sub-strata to allow good drainage. I had an area of solid clay by my home and so I build a raised flower bed from railroad ties. I made the bed about 30 inches tall and I had about 18 inches of two inch rock then about 4 inched of crushed rock then the rest top soil. I planted strawberries and got many years of great harvest from them.
The only thing I would do differently is build with cement instead of railroad ties. In the Northwest, even treated wood breaks down and rots in 4-5 years. I had to replace the ties repeatedly. Till I finally ripped them out and poured cement walls.
One way to create a raised bed with less expense and labor is to simply tier you garden. Create a small bed, by adding about 4 inches of crushed rock then about six inches of top soil and compost.
This will raise it above the rest of the yard by about a cinder brick in height, you will need to decide what material you are to use for a boarder. The added rock will increase your drainage and should allow you to plant those plants which require better drainage.
If you have grass where you want the bed to be, dig out the sod to use elsewhere. If you decide to move the sod you should put down a plant barrier before refilling the hole left by the sod. An added benefit is that if you fill the hole with gravel, then put on your top soil and manure you won't need near as high a boarder. So there is some benefit to moving the sod.
If you are going to put your bed where there is grass now you need to spray a grass killer on the sod. There are some very effective herbicides created for that purpose and some are designed to have vegetables grow in that same soil after only seven days.
In other word the herbicide is systemic and does not contaminate the soil. Very cool stuff. The Ezine Publishers frown on me using brand names (lawsuits you know) but your local super store will be able to direct you to the product best suited for the purpose. I used it extensively in my landscape business.
Also ask for the plant barrier a sort of cloth that will help stop the grass from growing up into your new flower beds giving you the bad karma payback you probably don't deserve (..hm.. or do you). There is also a chemical that you can put down under the plant barrier to stop plants from growing upward into your beds works really good but is very hard on the soil and environment. Ask your superstore garden department person for recommendations.
Be very careful with any chemical you buy. Always use protective gloves and clothing and read the label completely before applying any chemical. I once sprayed a ladies yard for bugs, the label recommended 24 hours before re-entry, that is using the treated area. The family goose got into the treated yard, ate the dead bugs and died from second hand poisoning. You must be careful.
Keep in mind the root system of the plants your need a raised bed for, in the instance of my strawberries I needed nowhere near the height. I build the flower bed higher so my wife and I could tend it without getting on our knees.
Strawberries however, have a shallow root ball and I could have gotten away with raising an area no more that ten inches. So learn the root habit of the plant you want to raise and go from there. If you have to have more depth before the original soil that get water saturated then you need more height to you beds, simple yeah?
Don't be intimidated by the thought of adjusting the very topography of your yard. It is easily done even if it is labor intensive. You can do a small project at a time, or you can have a landscape gardener come in and build it for you. Be careful though,set yourself a budget before you have that creative genius out, he'll have you buying a corner waterfall and importing exotic birds.
If you want to test your soil just dig a hole in the desired garden plot some say 10 inched deep but I go with a 2x2x2 foot hole that is two feet square. Fill the hole with water over night then fill it again in the morning if you have water standing by afternoon you should consider raised flower beds.
Raised flower beds allow you to put in the sub-strata to allow good drainage. I had an area of solid clay by my home and so I build a raised flower bed from railroad ties. I made the bed about 30 inches tall and I had about 18 inches of two inch rock then about 4 inched of crushed rock then the rest top soil. I planted strawberries and got many years of great harvest from them.
The only thing I would do differently is build with cement instead of railroad ties. In the Northwest, even treated wood breaks down and rots in 4-5 years. I had to replace the ties repeatedly. Till I finally ripped them out and poured cement walls.
One way to create a raised bed with less expense and labor is to simply tier you garden. Create a small bed, by adding about 4 inches of crushed rock then about six inches of top soil and compost.
This will raise it above the rest of the yard by about a cinder brick in height, you will need to decide what material you are to use for a boarder. The added rock will increase your drainage and should allow you to plant those plants which require better drainage.
If you have grass where you want the bed to be, dig out the sod to use elsewhere. If you decide to move the sod you should put down a plant barrier before refilling the hole left by the sod. An added benefit is that if you fill the hole with gravel, then put on your top soil and manure you won't need near as high a boarder. So there is some benefit to moving the sod.
If you are going to put your bed where there is grass now you need to spray a grass killer on the sod. There are some very effective herbicides created for that purpose and some are designed to have vegetables grow in that same soil after only seven days.
In other word the herbicide is systemic and does not contaminate the soil. Very cool stuff. The Ezine Publishers frown on me using brand names (lawsuits you know) but your local super store will be able to direct you to the product best suited for the purpose. I used it extensively in my landscape business.
Also ask for the plant barrier a sort of cloth that will help stop the grass from growing up into your new flower beds giving you the bad karma payback you probably don't deserve (..hm.. or do you). There is also a chemical that you can put down under the plant barrier to stop plants from growing upward into your beds works really good but is very hard on the soil and environment. Ask your superstore garden department person for recommendations.
Be very careful with any chemical you buy. Always use protective gloves and clothing and read the label completely before applying any chemical. I once sprayed a ladies yard for bugs, the label recommended 24 hours before re-entry, that is using the treated area. The family goose got into the treated yard, ate the dead bugs and died from second hand poisoning. You must be careful.
Keep in mind the root system of the plants your need a raised bed for, in the instance of my strawberries I needed nowhere near the height. I build the flower bed higher so my wife and I could tend it without getting on our knees.
Strawberries however, have a shallow root ball and I could have gotten away with raising an area no more that ten inches. So learn the root habit of the plant you want to raise and go from there. If you have to have more depth before the original soil that get water saturated then you need more height to you beds, simple yeah?
Don't be intimidated by the thought of adjusting the very topography of your yard. It is easily done even if it is labor intensive. You can do a small project at a time, or you can have a landscape gardener come in and build it for you. Be careful though,set yourself a budget before you have that creative genius out, he'll have you buying a corner waterfall and importing exotic birds.
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