4 Raised Bed Mistakes You Definitely Want to Avoid in Your Garden

Here are four mistakes to avoid when you are setting up your raised beds for your beautiful kitchen garden. My name is Nicole Burke. I'm the owner of Gardenery, which means gardening is ordinary and we want to make gardening ordinary for you. And one of the ways we make it so simple is by growing in these awesome containers called raised beds. So raised beds are one of the easiest ways to start a vegetable garden. It lets you start with the best soil. It allows your plants to have lots of room to spread out and to grow without having to dig deep into the ground. It also allows you to pack in the plants. I love to fill up my raised beds to the brim because the soil is so rich and the beds give so much room at the roots so that the plants can really maximize their space there. Raised beds also allow you to have soil that heats up much faster than your in-ground gardens and raised beds drain quickly as well. So they're going to let go of water much faster, which is just what your vegetable plants love. So we know that raised beds are wonderful, but what about the mistakes? I myself have created several gardens for myself that I regretted and so I want to teach you the four mistakes I've made and I've seen tons of my clients make too so that you don't. So let's start out with number one and that is not having the right height for your raised bed. I'm going to show you three different heights of my raised beds so you can make sure you've got the best height for yours. So why does height matter in the kitchen garden? It's for two reasons. The first reason is for yourself. So when you're setting up your kitchen garden, you want to be sure that it's the right height for you. You're the gardener. You're the person who's got to do all the work in the garden and so you want to be sure the height fits your needs most importantly. So plants are important. Most important is what you need. So this height right here is almost two feet tall. I think it's about 20 inches. So this is a great height for tending. You can lean over but you don't have to lean over too far. I don't have to bend my knees to get to the plants and take care of everything I've got growing. These beds back here are at about 18 inches. These are our gardenery court and steel beds so you can see to tend these plants. Here on the trellis, I don't have to bend at all obviously but if I'm tending or planting down at the soil level, I do need to get on my knees or get to my knees. Then back here in the middle of the garden, these beds are 12 inches tall and so you can see to get to these beds, I really do have to get down even a little bit lower. So if you're someone who enjoys tending gardens low to the ground, then this one is going to be fine for you. You can pull up a little knee pad, little bench, have a seat and work in the garden. This height is going to be better for you if you don't want to bend as much and then these taller beds are going to be even better if you don't want to bend hardly at all. So that's the first thing to think about because the garden essentially is made for you. Yes, we're growing plants but if you don't enjoy being out in your garden, then the plants are going to suffer. All right, the second reason to pay attention to the height is for the plants. So for fruiting plants, plants like tomatoes and cucumbers, squash, zucchini, watermelons, all those kinds of plants that go all the way to the fruiting part of their production cycle, you do want to have deeper beds. Now, will these plants survive and grow in less shallow beds? Of course, but they're going to do it much easier in a deeper bed. So for a fruiting plant, I do try to have a bed that's at least 18 inches tall. So this one definitely works. I also obviously grow tons of tomatoes in these beds that are just shy of 18 inches. I think these are about 16 inches tall. So if you're growing fruiting plants, you want to have beds that are about 12 to 18 inches tall. That's the goal. You can get them all the way up to two feet obviously if you need them. If you're growing root crops, I like to have beds that are about 12 inches tall. So that's carrots, beets, radishes, parsnips, anything where that plant's going to be digging down a big deep root, then a 12 inch bed is great. So this one's more than 12 inches. These ones here in the middle are going to work perfectly for a root crop plant. Now, if you're growing leafy greens, so herbs like oregano, things like this kale, lettuces, arugula, romaine, spinach, all of those can grow in beds that are actually six inches. So you want to have a minimum of six inches, but with a six inch deep bed, you've got plenty of depth there to have success in the garden. So that's number one. Don't make your raised beds too short. My first raised beds we created were way too short. We just bought four inch boards from Home Depot and the beds were not nearly deep enough to have the success we were hoping for. So that's number one. The next one again is about your accessibility. So I've gotten to lots of clients gardens where I didn't get to set up their garden and their pathways were way too narrow. So when you're setting up a pathway between your raised beds, you really want the space to be about three feet wide. So you can see here, I've got enough room to push a wheelbarrow to move anything in and out of this garden space without bumping up against the other beds while I'm working. This also gives you plenty of room to grow vertically and to have lots of plants growing in between your beds. This distance here between these two beds is more like two feet and you can see even though I can get between the two beds, it is a little bit tight. So I'd much prefer, this is fine since I don't have to get a wheelbarrow through this space, but two feet generally would be the minimum amount of space you'd want to have between your raised beds. And I find if I'm wanting to get a wheelbarrow and get other materials through the garden, then three feet really is the perfect space between those raised beds. So that's mistake number two. Don't make your spacing between the beds too narrow. Now let's get to number three. Mistake number three is making your beds too wide or too narrow. So what you want to be aware of is the the stretch of your arm, how far you can reach from one side of the bed to the other. I just looked at this beautiful raised garden design the other day and they had built this entire huge hexagon right in the center, which looked so cool from above, but is so impractical in terms of tending that garden. There's no way you can reach across and get to all the plants. So my reach is generally about two feet, maybe a little bit over two feet to get into the bed. So if I'm right on the edge, I can reach in right about two feet through and get to the center of this bed because this bed is just about four feet wide. But if it was any further, if it was three feet or four feet that I had to reach without being able to get to it from the other side, I end up probably falling into the bed or kind of crushing or pushing against the plants that are down here below. So if you can reach the bed from all sides then the widest you'd want to make it is probably five feet wide and that's going to be a little bit of a stretch. Generally the typical width is four feet, so anywhere from four to five feet is okay for the width. But if it's a bed that you can only reach from one side then you want to really cap off the width at two and a half feet because I can reach this far and really no further. So if there's a wall here or a fence here then I don't want the bed to be any wider, otherwise there's going to be plants back there or space that I actually can't utilize because it's too far away, it's outside of my reach. All right, so that's for the width. Don't make a mistake of building your bed too wide or too narrow. Too wide if you can access it from all sides and too narrow. So too narrow comes, I've seen lots of raised beds where they're just simply too small, they're not worth the effort. All right, so we've talked about the height, we've talked about the space between the beds and the width of the beds. There's just one more mistake that I see people make. Another mistake I see a lot of people make is not taking the time to choose the best material for their raised bed. In my book, Kitchen Garden Revival, I've got a chart right here that allows you to compare all the different materials you're considering for your raised beds. Here are the criteria, natural, durable, beautiful, sustainable and affordable. So there's a lot to consider when it comes to what kind of material you want to use for your raised bed and it's worth the time it takes to make a good decision. Here's why, raised beds cost money and raised beds take time and raised beds are really hard to move once set up. So if you're going to take the time and the money and the trouble to set up raised beds, then you want to do it as well as you can the first time around. I always tell all my clients and students, pick the material that is the best you can afford at this time. So me, I still would love to have a stone kitchen garden, but I can't quite afford that just yet. So what I stepped it up to this time around are court and steel raised beds. So this material will last longer than cedar. It has a smaller footprint and it's very, very durable and sustainable. Now cedar is my choice before steel. We have lots of cedar beds inside the gardenery shop. I love using untreated cedar and putting a coat of eco-friendly stain on the inside that keeps that wood from deteriorating once I'm growing in it. So cedar is my first choice. That material fits all these criteria. It's natural, it's durable, it's beautiful, it's sustainable and it's somewhat affordable. Steel fits the chart pretty well too and then stone definitely does. So you can build your raised bed out of whatever material you want to. I just highly encourage you to check out this chart, take some time to pick the material, put some thought into it and make sure you get the best that you can afford at this time. You can definitely redo your kitchen garden. You can definitely add more raised beds at different times, but it's totally worth it to do it as well as you can the first time. Durability is top of the list because you want to have these beds as long as you possibly can to make the most of your investment. These are the four mistakes you're going to avoid now that you've watched this video. Check the height of your raised bed. Make sure the spacing between your raised beds is good. Check the width of your raised bed and spend the most you can on your raised bed material to be sure they last you as long as possible. We've got some resources to help you grow your own kitchen garden, your own raised bed right below this video. You can sign up for our upcoming live workshop and get an awesome resource to get you growing right away right below this video. You can also find a link to my book Kitchen Garden Revival and my second book which is all about the plants called Leaves, Roots and Fruit. Subscribe to this video, like it, tell me in the comments which mistake you've made before or which mistake you're super glad you're not going to make because you watched this video. Please subscribe to the Gardenery channel and if you love it, share this with a friend so they don't make these raised bed mistakes either. Thanks so much for watching and I will see you in your raised bed next time.