From the Ground Up: Building Raised Beds
Want to try your hand at growing garden-fresh flavors? Get started by constructing your own raised beds.
One way to stretch your grocery budget is to grow your own produce. At Lowe’s, we’re committed to helping you with every home improvement project—including ideas that help you save money. In conjunction with Metrolina Greenhouses, Inc., in Huntersville, N.C., we’re installing a home-style vegetable garden—just like you would have in your own backyard. Our garden is a little larger, with 15 raised beds, but the techniques will work in your yard, too.
Raised beds take gardening to a new level: increased yields, healthier soil, decreased water use, and easy season extension. The simple beauty of a raised bed is that the soil in the bed is never walked on—it’s always fluffy and welcoming to plant roots, never compacted.
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Make a Plan
Vegetables need a minimum of six hours of sun daily—the more sun, the better. (The exception is shallow-rooted greens, like lettuce and spinach, which thrive in light shade.) When planning your beds, orient them north to south to maximize plant exposure to the sun. Once produce is ripening, daily picking will be necessary. Placing your bed in a convenient location near your home will make frequent trips to the garden a cinch. It’s also wise to choose a site near a water source for easy irrigation.
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Plan your crops before settling on bed dimensions to be certain you have enough room for the vegetables you want. To choose what to grow, focus on flavors your family likes. If pizza or Italian flavors are a favorite, then grow tomatoes, peppers, chives, basil, and oregano. For classic stew, raise potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, and onions. Hearty chili starts with beans, onions, tomatoes, and peppers. If space is at a premium, avoid land-gobbling plants, such as pumpkins, watermelon, or corn. As you design the plantings for each bed, plant taller crops on the north edge of beds so that tall plants don’t shade shorter plants.
Building Know-How
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The secret to successful raised-bed gardening is creating beds that are wide enough to reach across. Paths between beds can be as narrow as a foot, but it’s best to make them wide enough to accommodate a wheelbarrow or garden cart so that you can add compost to the beds over time.
Our raised beds are 5 feet wide and 8 feet long; grassy paths between the beds run 5 feet wide. We built our beds using 3 x 5 x 8 landscape timbers and formed rectangular beds, but any shape could work.
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Lay out your bed design with stakes and string, and dig a shallow trench around the edges to allow the first timber to rest slightly below soil level. Stack timbers level, staggering the seams; nail them into place using 6-inch landscape nails. To prevent wood from splitting, pre-drill nail holes. We stacked our beds two timbers high, which yields a raised bed roughly 10 inches deep.
Loosen existing soil in beds. For heaviest yields, follow a double-digging method, loosening soil 16-24 inches deep, removing stones, and mixing in compost or other soil amendments. We filled our beds with a mixture of 50 percent by volume Miracle-Gro Garden Soil for Flowers & Vegetables and bagged topsoil.
To reduce costs, form raised beds by creating mounds of soil without a permanent framework around them. Cover these beds with a thick layer (3-4 inches) of mulch, such as straw, grass clippings, chopped leaves, or compost to keep soil from washing away in heavy rains. Add timbers around beds over time, as your budget permits.