Raised garden beds are the natural partner to the 1970s square foot gardening. Square Foot Gardening literally taught us how to plant a variety of edible plants in a small space. Regardless of your heritage, it seems like our grandparents always grew vegetables in home gardens. They spent their money at the market on meat and baking products and grew all the fresh elements of their diet in the backyard.
The MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement is bringing real food back to America’s tables. We’re becoming more interested in how our food is grown, and how food impacts our lives as fuel.
Planters and Containers
Container gardening isn’t new. My first real awareness of container gardening’s efficiency came on my first trip to Walt Disney World’s EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival in 1994. The park obviously emphasizes decorative planting, but it always focused on placing different complementary plants in a single pot to create a show-stopping presentation. Of course, you can do this with vegetables and herbs.
Garden centers retail beautiful raised bed frames at pretty reasonable prices. I bought my first 4×4 garden setup at Aldi’s, of all places. Prices can start at $40 for a basic wood or plastic structure, and go up to hundreds of dollars for metal garden frames in pretty colors. But this project doesn’t have to cost a lot. A quick YouTube search reveals many enterprising home gardeners growing squash, tomatoes, cabbage, and lettuce in 5-gallon buckets.
Planting a Raised Garden Bed
One obvious reason to plant your garden in a raised bed is reduced strain on your back and legs when weeding and cultivating the soil. Keep the beds no wider than 4 feet so you can reach the middle from both sides. If the bed is adjacent to a fence or wall, reduce the width by half since you’ll be working it from only one side.
If you plan to plant multiple beds, leave a path between the garden structures wide enough to walk and, if possible, wide enough to mow and edge away grass and weeds.
Map out each box by dividing it into squares. Look at how much you can plant in these squares! I like to place bamboo stakes 12 inches apart on each edge of the structure. I then run twine between each stake, dividing the bed into multiple 1-foot-square spaces. This makes it easy to define planting areas.
Why a Raised Garden
Almost half of all US homeowners garden in some form, and post-pandemic, many of us are growing vegetables in the backyard. This is not a wholly new phenomenon. The backyard farmer tradition goes way back to the beginning of the country. The popularity ebbs and flows from decade to decade, but the thrill of picking the fruits of your labor never goes away entirely.
- Controlled water drainage
- Pest and Disease control
- Fresh and balanced soil blend
- Weed control
- Extended growing season and higher yields
What will you grow?
Florida’s “winter” season begins in a couple of days and runs September to December. At my house we eat at least one salad every day. So I’ll dedicate one of my raised beds to leafy greens and herbs. Lettuce, leafy greens, cherry tomatoes, and winter vegetables must germinate and produce within 90 to 120 days before the cold weather settles in.
My 6×4 garden bed divides into six squares. Tomato plants take an entire square and will anchor positions one and four (one plant each). I’m going to plant a vertical trellis for delicata squash in space two. Two types of lettuce will grow in square five directly in front of the squash plants. That leaves the end positions three for seasonal herbs: parsley, cilantro, and dill. I’ve set aside space six for various peppers.
Constructed Raised Garden Beds
A traditional raised garden bed is built out of rot-resistant lumber like cedar, redwood, or in Florida, cypress. Stick to these hardwoods if your passion is organic gardening.
You can use pressure-treated wood, but you will need to line the box with heavy plastic if you plan to grow vegetables to prevent chemicals from leaching into the soil.
New metal structures sold online are great for small beds and come in wall heights from 24 to 36 inches. Just remember, the deeper the bed, the more material you will need to purchase or grab to fill it. The modular metal raised garden bed kits can be customized to build two 4×4 foot gardens or one 4×8 foot garden.
I yielded to my age and my knees before committing to a minimum height of 18 inches.