Why Raised Garden Beds?

The quick answer to why you should grow your food in a raised bed: Your knees and lower back. Less use of heating pads and anti-inflammatories.

The long answer: Raised bed soil warms up more quickly than dirt at ground level. This means you can plant earlier in the season and grow longer! I don't know about you, but by the time February comes around, I'm beyond ready to get in the garden.

Pets tend to stay away from raised beds, though I do put small sectional fencing around the perimeter for the first few weeks of the season. When my dog Chewie sees me putting seeds in the soil, she later "helps" by patting the soil down with her paws. Sigh....You can also easily add hoops and row covers to keep most other critters out. Plus, in the fall you can drape a frost cover over those same hoops and gain extra growing days or even weeks on the tail-end of the season. If you live in a very windy location (hello, Wyo!), you might consider DIY hoops using 5 1/2' to 6' sections of 1" PVC pipe and brackets for a stronger hoop setup.

Also, raised beds are aesthetically pleasing, like a framed picture or a vase displaying the beauty of your garden. Go ahead, pull up a chair next to your raised beds, sip your mug of coffee or glass of iced tea and bask in the glory of it all.

The top reason? Because you fill garden beds with soil, you can add much higher quality soil than in-ground dirt. This will drastically improve growing conditions for your vegetable garden. Being a practical gardener, it's all about successfully growing as much of my own food as possible. Starting with great soil is key, and raised beds are the best way to control the type of soil you plant your garden in. A while back, I read somewhere that it would take at least a decade of amending our clay dirt to improve it by something like 25 percent. Suddenly, the small investment of time and money to set up raised beds with good quality soil seems a great idea.

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