In this video I will share seven common raised bed garden mistakes. Gardening in raised beds is easier because you have control over more variable and can grow more in less space, unless you make these mistakes. So watch this video and avoid all 7 of these raised bed gardening mistakes.
MENTIONED PRODUCTS
Grassroots Fabric Pots & Raised Beds
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MENTIONED/RELATED VIDEO
Building raised beds (like at old house): https://youtu.be/8Z48Ni8wgm0
Build Simple Raised Beds (like in this video): https://youtu.be/EiR20Dqad6U
Winterizing Raised Beds:
DIGITAL TABLE OF CONTENTS
00:37 – How long should a raised bed be
01:49 – How deep should a raised garden bed be
04:02 – Materials to use for raised beds
06:15 – What do you fill raised beds with
08:39 – Do you need to refresh raised bed garden soil
09:51 – Do you need to mulch raised garden beds
11:25 – How do you prepare raised beds for winter?
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Hey Guys, I’m Brian from Next Level Gardening
Welcome to our online community! A place to be educated, inspired and hopefully entertained at the same time! A place where you can learn to grow your own food and become a better organic gardener. At the same time, a place to grow the beauty around you and stretch that imagination (that sometimes lies dormant, deep inside) through gardening.
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40 Comments
There are two sides to the pressure treated lumber debate. I watch multiple gardening channels and it’s a mixed bag of opinions. I use new pressure treated because I don’t care that it’s not certified organic. Organic to me is kind of over blown, so I’ll use both chemical fertilizers like Miracle Grow and natural like compost and manure.
Thank you for the great tips Brian.
I made a 4'x8'x2' bed sunk in 6" with hardware cloth, bye bye mole problem 🙂
My beds are 3 x 9. I’m short so 3 ft is my perfect width and I chose 9 ft because I got 2 -12 ft boards and cut 3 ft of each one to make one bed. My beds are now 7 inches but my new beds will be 14 inches high.
Mixing in coco core is the cheapest way to lighten your soil
Thanks!
The pressure regulating emitters aren’t available 😭
I had no success for 2 years planting in the ground, so I went with steel raised beds filled with a raised bed mix, and my plants are absolutely thriving in two of the three beds. The third bed has a thick layer of partially composted mulch, and everything looks like it's dying. My tomato plants are stunted and leaves curling. My watermelon are turning yellow and drying up. I have no idea what's going on there.
Would pet bedding be safe to use as mulch? I seen bags of fine wood shaving for guinea pigs. I guess at Walmart. I was thinking to use it, but I didn’t know if I had anything in it that wasn’t safe.
Amazon has provided a huge amount of cardboard for the base of my raised beds.
I should probably stop shopping now 😬😂
Do not use walnut leaves or branches as they poison the soil so nothing grows. I reinforced my beds on the outside to maximize internal grow space. I tried to line inside the bed walls to keep the arsenic from the roots. I also placed hard plastic on the top of my fencing so the squirrels could not climb in. I need to make chicken wire covers for my 4X4 beds so the birds can't eat my strawberries, before I can. Every thing else you spoke I agreed with. I also have to use a grabber to plant with and pull weeds because I can no longer bend down far enough to do it by hand and it works well for me. Another great video Brian. Keep on growing with it. May the Lord keep blessing you and yours.
I used 2 x 12 unmilled hemlock for mine. They are 16 years old and just starting to need board replacement here and there.
We built one area to plant using basic cinder block and it works great. We also use the large totes with rope handles (made for your kids toys) to plant in and they have been wonderful! We line them down our arched cattle panels for a 16 foot arch for cucumbers and beans to climb….this year we are adding pie pumpkins and tiny watermelons. The only thing we plant in the ground is corn, this year we may add some carving pumpkins under the corn. For our tomatoes and some flowers we use the black buckets the floral department at Kroger displays in…..they give them away here and work wonderfully! We don't have near the size garden you do, but with our health issues what we do have is a lot for us!
Sooooo glad I saw this!! I was about to make a couple of these mistakes!!
I don't get buying $$ a tall metal raised bed then fill it with logs. Why not just get a lower one?
With regard to using tree and branches for the bottom of the raised bed, are there any trees not to use? I have a fruitless plumb I'm about to cut down but read the wood and leaves are toxic, cyanide I believe?
Thank you for the great information!!
Mulching is often overlooked, it has been by me the whole time.
I live in the high Nevada Desert, I'm sure now that has been the root of my issues…
Thanks!
The paths between the beds should be wide enough to accommodate your wheelbarrow. 👍
for deep raised beds such as 3 foot + use hugelkultur techniques
dont forget to make sure you can turn a wheelbarrow between your beds
Thank you as always love your content. Just started my beds and I’m getting there. I know it’s a bit late , but I’m getting there
Would clay soil mixed with sandy soil , mixed with some nice compost should make pretty decent "planting soil"? Clay=nutrients, sand = drainage etc
So I get confused about mulching, topping off and winter protection. I'm in central NC, 7b. We get very little, if any, snow but our high temps can be well below freezing. I still have no idea how to plant a fall garden between the end of my summer garden and my first frost date. I tend to grow my summer garden up to (and a little past) my first frost date with some frost protection. By the time I remove the edibles, there doesn't seem to be enough time for a cover crop to sprout and grow.
If I mulch my beds (summer or winter), do I remove the mulch (and compost it?) before topping off with fresh soil? I feel like no one talks about the details. Just general statements are made: "mulch your beds", "refresh your beds". Help!
I have used treated, but was mindful of the chemicals. I covered the sides with plastic so any leaching went down into the earth. My beds are 15" tall so if any chemical is there it will be minimal.
Thanks for this and so many other videos. Would you please do a video just on the pros and cons of various mulch options? Like you, I live in S. California. Unlike you, I’ve never mulched my vegetable garden, although I do think I should. I have celiac disease and severe reactions to gluten, including contact, so straw is out. Compost – I have some from my own pile but not a ton. I don’t trust the municipal compost enough to put it on food. Do you? The mushroom farm – I’ve used it before, but their compost is very hot. Would it burn as a mulch? What do you think of newspaper? I wonder about chemicals in it. Shredded wood – from the landfill – what do you think? And doesn’t it suck up nitrogen? Same for wood shavings of bedding, too. Anyway, I could really use a video. 😊
Another topic that I’d like a video on please is how to keep track of what you have done and plan to do in the garden. By this I mean, I planted X seed on Y date, so should expect to harvest on Z date. And I need to fertilize A bed on B date. And recorder experiments – I tried C amendment and got D outcome. Please share how you suggest keeping track of this.
I've built 15 raised beds of various shapes and sizes, but by far my favorites are the 4 ft. x 8 ft. beds. Most of my beds are 12" tall however the first bed I ever built was 24" tall and I made the mistake of filling it completely with raised bed mix which hit the pocketbook pretty hard so I switched to 12" tall beds to save money. One thing I do include on all of my raised beds are 2" x 6"'s mounted flat along two sides so my 70 year old posterior has a place to sit while I garden. I try to keep off of my knees as much as possible.
My beds are 3’x6’ and 20” tall with hardware cloth on the bottom.
I am guilty of using bagged garden soil mixed with compost, vermiculite, and raised bed mix.
Good afternoon, that was exceptionally helpful, answered so many questions even though i do not have the ability to have a raised bed, at the moment, that might change in the future. It is nice to know where to go for answers to my questions. Have a lovely day!
Thank you Brian.
Many years ago when we lived on a farm, I splurged and had 5 yards of "premium top soil" delivered, thinking it would be a good starting point on a new 20×20 plot. I was wrong. It compacted and solidified quickly and I ended up spending a small fortune on bagged potting soil and coconut fiber to lighten it up.
We since moved to a condo where my only option is fabric plant bags that I filled with 1/3 potting soil, 1/3 composted cow manure, and 1/3 hydrated coconut coir, with 8 pounds of fish, bat guano, and worm castings to make it more nutrient rich. I use the same media every year by screening and hydrating with 50:50 hydrogen peroxide:water to kill any pathogens in the mixture and add another bag of compost every Spring to replenish lost volume and nutrients.
Works great for me. I use absolutely no bag fertilizers or chemical boosters and only supplement with a top dressing of calcium once a year to avoid blossom-end rot.
I employ root-zone water drippers to save water and avoid damp leaf fungus problems.
All the bags are mulched with at least an inch of pine shavings.
Wow! Sharp! Button down shirt. Very nice. Very helpful raised bed tutorial. I always cover the beds for winter but, would dig before adding new compost. Very good point. I won’t dig; didn’t want to anyway. Laughed again! Thanks, Brian. Many blessings
Great video Brian! Thanks! Blessings 🙏🏻💞
One more…do not put down plastic or line the beds with plastic! Creates a drainage nightmare.
Good applications. We have a church project, that sits on the most-moist of black gold (natural) soil. We would have to put down a hefty load of wood chips to suck up water into the high raised beds, but also keep back enough zone of saturation (ours is right at the surface !), so that the above soil becomes the zone of aeration. Then putting in sand, keeps the water in the wood chips, but if it is black sand (i.e. finding gold, black sand iron is nearby) and this provides iron to the plants, whereas pure sand (silicon dioxide) is just sand. – IF !! – you want to put in nitrogen into the raised bed matrix, this is the time to either (1) layer in a massive load of alfalfa or vetch or (2) get out the household ammonia (NH4). Dilute the ammonia, close off your nose and mouth, and soak the sand with the nitrogen (which also helps decompose the wood chips (that suck up nitrogen). Cover again with sand, keeping the ammonia gas at that layer. Roots dig down to find the nitrogen – as deep nitrogen makes the deep roots grow stronger, while nitrogen is the "UPWARD" potion of NKP for bigger/taller plant growth. – IF – you have potash, campfire ash, wood ash from other burns – this is potassium and other wood salts. Potassium, the K in NKP, is the "DOWNWARD" growth of sturdy and big roots, which happens when they grow down to the nitrogen layer. If you have other potassium salts, this is where you want to put them – also making deep and strong roots (or tuber vegetables, carrots, salsify, parsnips, turnips, rutubagas, beets, mangels, jicama, daikon radish, potato, sweet potato, yam, …). P, or phosphorus, is rock dust, quarry dust, or the famous A-Z rock dust, providing the many 1500+ dust soil minerals for the plant's healthy growth and fruiting production. Also nitrogen (and sulfur) are the basis for the many 22 amino (i.e. ammonia, nitrogen) acids for humans, animals, and plants to live healthy lives, and higher enzymatic processes in all life forms. Phosphorus is the "ALL ROUND" chemical element, for a wide and bushy plant with maximum foliage for great photosynthesis and plant sugars, starches, proteins for the plant – but also the final fruiting production.
On top of these thin layers in a small-height raised bed (2-6 inches) or thicker with higher 1-2-3-4 foot deep raised beds, one then piles on the various matrix of loamy soil (clay, sand, silt), organic and fibrous manure (also its nitrogen content), organic tea (liquid nitrogen and minerals), … if you want to use water retentive gel crystals that is your decision, but not necessary. Install your subsurface irrigation piping and drips, or wait to have a surface drip system, or a small irrigation sprinkler system. The best is to keep YOUR WATER and YOUR WATER BILL to a minimum, so install under a healthy load of mulch coverings.
With a lady here, with her garden, vineyard, and orchard in greater SanFran, we put 4-8 inches of tree trimming (twigs, chips, and shredded leaves) mulch across her entire garden. 8-12 inches in the vineyard, and 12-18 inches in the orchard. We found the garden was producing 1+ inch black gold soil in 1 year, and the vineyard and orchard producing even more (with NO IRRIGATION !) – natural soil zone of saturation providing all the water needs.
Get your raised bed project going and producing. With further years, remember to layer the POST-harvest soil with these same chips, sand, ammonia, sand, potash, rock dust. Leave these out in the Fall/Winter/Spring rains, deep fertilizing these chemicals down into the de-natured soil of the previous harvest. Put another large layer of the surface mulch AFTER ! you do all your Spring plantings, then mulch the surface.
Your videos should come with a warning to always have your pen and paper handy to take notes. I think you are a great teacher and I’m learning more than the brain can absorb. So glad these are videos that can be rewatched!
Question: should I break up native soil before putting a raised bed on top? I have heavy clay and was wondering will the roots have trouble hitting that hard pan layer of soil?