Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening

How to Build and Tend Your Own Raised Bed Garden

Raised Bed Vegetable Gardens with Trellises to Maximize Space

Do you envision a tidy, beautiful raised bed vegetable garden, spilling over with dark ripe tomatoes, crispy romaine lettuce and crunchy sweet carrots... right out your back door?

Everything you need to know to make your vision happen is here. 

This page is the main gateway to the articles that cover all aspects of growing vegetables in raised beds.

Before you start to build (or buy) your raised bed vegetable garden, I encourage you to wander through these pages and explore your options. They can help you avoid making the common mistakes that people often make when they're starting out.

There are two main parts to making a raised bed vegetable garden: the frame and the soil. They are both a bit trickier than they first appear.

Frames for Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening

The frame around a raised bed garden is usually (but not always!) made of wood, and the corners are under a tremendous amount of pressure from the weight of the soil, water, and growing plants.

In addition to that, the wood is usually wet on one side and dry on the other, which over time makes the wood want to swell on the wet side, and therefore warp.

So for durability it's important to know some simple construction guidelines before you get started,

Soil for Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening

As in any type of vegetable garden, the health, quality, and nutrition of your vegetables depends entirely on the health of your soil. After you you're done building your raised bed and are ready to fill it, please visit the soil for raised beds article.

Raised Bed Garden Designs: Photo Gallery
This is a photo gallery featuring 9 different raised bed garden designs. The close-up photographs of the corner details should make it easy for those who are even a little handy to duplicate the construction. Make the dimensions fit your taste or space.

Soil for Raised Beds
As in any type of vegetable garden, the health, quality, and nutrition of your vegetables depends entirely on the health of your soil. Not just any potting mix will do!

Raised Bed Garden Kits
The fastest way to get up and growing is with a raised bed garden kit. Just open the box, assemble, fill with potting mix, and plant! Available in many different designs, raised bed garden kits also come in different sizes and depths to fit your needs. This article is a side-by-side comparison of the best.

Raised Strawberry Bed
Everyone loves raised beds, and everyone loves strawberries! A raised strawberry bed combines the best of both worlds.

Organic Vegetable Gardening
While everything on this site is about organics, this article is a great place to get an intro the overall plan and perspective if you want to grow organically in your new raised bed.

Raised Bed Construction
No matter what design of raised bed garden you choose to build, observe these construction details which hold true for all raised bed construction. By following these simple do's and don'ts you can build a custom raised bed any width and length you choose, out of 2x6s, 2x8s, 4x4s, 4x6s or any other sturdy lumber.

French-Intensive Raised Bed Garden (Double Dug)
There is another type of raised bed, too: one with no frame at all! It costs nothing for building materials or imported potting soil, honors and supports natural soil ecology, and is sustainable indefinitely. You can watch a You Tube video showing how to use the method, if you would like to compare it with framed raised beds.

Raised Bed Corner Brackets
If you want to use local lumber but don’t have much in the way of tools, you can buy pre-made corners to join your lumber together. This is less expensive than buying kits, and allows you to make your raised bed garden any width or length. All you need is a screwdriver!

Square-Foot Gardening
A simple way to get started with raised beds, and a method that makes layout easy.

Hugelkulture
"Hugelkulture" (or "hill culture") is a vegetable bed built over buried wood - a lot of it.. It's a great way to build mycorrhizal fungi in the garden, but it also has some downsides.

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