Raised Planting Beds in the Garden

Benefits

• In addition to increasing water drainage and allowing soil to heat more quickly, raised garden planters provide the handicapped and arthritic with an easier way to grow beautiful blooms and fresh vegetables. Raised gardens prevent the need for excessive bending and standing that causes pain to backs, necks and knees. Raised gardens also ensure that plants suffer less pain, by keeping foot traffic off of the plant's root system. With narrow raised garden beds, gardeners can walk beside the beds to prevent soil compaction that prevents soil and water from reaching plant roots.

Planning

• It is important to plan the layout of raised planting bed in the garden, to ensure you leave enough space for walkways. Beds may measure any length you need, but work best when kept below maximum widths of 4 feet. Make your raised planting bed any larger than 4 feet and you will not be able to easily reach the middle of the bed to tend to plants or harvest fruit.

Construction

• Building a raised planter in your garden should take no more than a couple of hours, if you want to use temporary planters. Permanent planters made from stone or brick will need to be mortared together, requiring a whole day or two to complete. Temporary beds will suffice for many years, are easy to make and even easier to disassemble, if needed. To create a temporary bed, nail together a rectangular frame or stack old tires, brick, block or stone to create walls measuring at least 6 inches tall. You can also create a raised bed without walls by piling soil at least 6 inches high on top of the soil and leveling the top to create a surface for planting. Hay around the edges of the beds and over pathways will prevent raised soil from eroding while also preventing the growth of weeds.

Amending Soil

• Raised garden beds make it easy to amend soil for the best growing conditions. When you add soil to your raised garden bed, be sure to add compost or aged manure to provide nutrients. You may also want to mix in some wood chips, peat moss or sandy loam to increase the water drainage of your soil.

Considerations

• Although you can still follow the suggested planting times and depths for your favorite garden vegetables, herbs or ornamental plants, you'll have to institute a couple of changes when making the switch to using raised planting beds. While better water drainage is beneficial to your garden, it means you will need to water and fertilize the beds more often than you would in a ground-level bed. Raised beds may need water as often as twice each day to prevent roots from scorching during hot and dry spells.