Raised Bed Gardening Tips with Gardener Scott | Design, Soil, and Pests | The joe gardener® Show

Welcome to a gardener-to-gardener deep dive into one of our most-loved topics: raised bed gardening. I’m joined by fellow gardening educator Gardener Scott (Scott Wilson), who brings years of experience, a thriving YouTube channel, and a new book to the table.

We talk about everything—from whether the cost of building a raised bed is worth it, to the best materials, soil strategies, critter protection, watering methods, and even incorporating flowers and perennials into your layout.

If you’re planning a new raised bed garden or improving an existing one, there’s something here for you.

👉 For more info, check out the full show notes: https://joegardener.com/podcast/raised-bed-gardening-gardener-scott/

🌿 Check out Scott’s YouTube channel for more great gardening content:
👉 Gardener Scott on YouTube – @GardenerScott

📘 And grab a copy of his book, “Gardener Scott’s Guide to Raised Bed Gardening,” for even more in-depth advice: https://www.amazon.com/Gardener-Scotts-Guide-Raised-Gardening/dp/0228105366?&linkCode=ll1&tag=g0c954-20&linkId=519cb5eb6a3debb2bc27f34c412b2880&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

🌱 Want more on raised beds? You might enjoy these podcast episodes:

Raised Bed Gardening, Pt. 1: Getting Started: https://joegardener.com/podcast/raised-bed-gardening-pt-1/
Raised Bed Gardening, Pt. 2: Perfect Soil Recipe: https://joegardener.com/podcast/raised-bed-gardening-pt-2/
Raised Bed Gardening, Pt. 3: Animal Control & More: https://joegardener.com/podcast/raised-bed-gardening-pt-3-animal-control-more/

💻 Did you know we host webinars throughout the year? Our Raised Bed Gardening Masterclass happens every April. Add your name to the waitlist here to get notified when it opens for registration! https://joegardener.com/webinarwaitlist/?ref=YT416raisedbeds

Thanks for watching, and if you’re new here, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes like this. And for a deeper dive into gardening education, visit my Online Gardening Academy™ – https://organicgardeningacademy.com/

💬 Have you built a raised bed garden yet—or are you planning one? What materials are you using, and what crops are you most excited to grow?

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Setting the Stage
01:27 Scott Wilson’s Gardening Journey
03:49 Starting the Gardener Scott YouTube Channel
06:19 Gardening Philosophy and Teaching Style
08:22 Scott’s Book: Guide to Raised Bed Gardening
10:23 Benefits and Costs of Raised Beds
15:08 Planning and Designing Raised Bed Gardens
24:03 Practical Tips & Common Mistakes
26:26 Raised Bed Height, Rabbits & Pest Prevention
29:05 Choosing the Right Height for Beds
30:46 Wood Options for Raised Beds
34:13 Alternative Raised Bed Materials
37:11 What to Know About Soil for Raised Beds
38:41 Bulk Soil vs. Bagged Soil
43:38 Watering Raised Beds: Hand Watering & Irrigation
47:42 Raised Beds for More Than Just Veggies
49:28 Why Add Flowers to Your Vegetable Garden
51:18 Final Thoughts & What’s Next

🛠️ Looking for the gardening gear, tools, and books I love?
https://www.amazon.com/shop/joegardener

*Some links listed may be affiliate links. I receive a commission every time you purchase a product through an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Connect:
joegardener.com
instagram.com/joegardener
facebook.com/joegardenerTV
pinterest.com/joegardener

📬 Subscribe to my email list for weekly organic gardening tips and podcast reminders in your inbox: https://joegardener.com/subscribe-joegardener/?ref=416YTraisedbeds

Hi everybody, this is Joe Lample, the Joe behind Joe Gardener, and welcome to the Joe Gardener Show. Today we’re joined by someone who has become a trusted voice and a friendly face in the gardening world, Scott Wilson, better known online as Gardener Scott. With a background as a master gardener, educator, and Air Force veteran, Scott brings a calm, science-based, and experienced driven approach to growing your own food and building a thriving, resilient garden. His YouTube channel, Gardener Scott, has become a go-to hub for millions of backyard growers and curious learners thanks to his clear tutorials, honest insights, and infectious love for gardening. And whether you’re a beginner unsure of where to start, or a lifelong gardener that just wants to go deeper, today’s conversation is packed with practical wisdom as Scott and I compare notes, surprising stories, and thoughtful perspectives that go way beyond the raised bed. So, I think this is a conversation you will really enjoy. I hope you do. Scott, it’s about time we had a chance to visit on a podcast episode and recording this for YouTube to uh gardener to gardener, raised bed gardener to raised bed gardener. you’ve got years of experience as I do and I’ve been looking forward to us just uh kind of having a uns well none of the things I do are scripted but just a really free form conversation about some of the topics related to raised bed gardening and let’s just see where it goes and and whatever we say people are going to listen in on it and hopefully there’s going to be some wisdom bestowed over the course of the next 45 minutes or so. How’s that sound? I think it sounds great. Good to be here, Joe. And I think between the two of us, we’ve got ample wisdom to share with everybody because we have many years between us. And a lot of it is focused on raised beds. So, let’s have a gardenerto gardener chat. And I agree. Let’s just free roll and see what happens. Sounds great. Okay. So, what I think we ought to do first though, and and you’re well known, but I think I love to have in your own words introduce yourself. What what can you tell us about your journey into gardening? When did it start? And I mean, you’ve had some rapid growth and a big following, but just give us an overview on that for those who may not be quite clued in yet on that. Okay. So, I’m Scott Wilson on YouTube and Instagram and everywhere. I’m gardener Scott and I actually got into full-time focused gardening uh relatively recently. Now I’m of a certain age, so when I say recently, I mean 25 years ago, but uh I had a full career in the US Air Force as a pilot and traveled all over and kind of dabbled in gardening all over the country. And then when I retired, I I wanted to be retired. I had prepped for that. I was ready for that and I discovered the master gardener program and became a master gardener here in Colorado. And then because I’d been an educator in the Air Force, it was just a natural progression for me to begin teaching gardening classes to the community and within the master gardener program. Being a mentor, I I developed a mentor program actually for the master gardener program. And then that led me to being hired at a local school to develop a huge school garden, 24,000 square feet of growing space, a 42 foot dome greenhouse. And as much as I knew and as much as I’d been teaching, I recognized there was a lot I didn’t know about growing food for a school district. And we ultimately were were growing over 2,000 pounds per year. And so what I ended up doing, of course, like many people that want to know about gardening, is I went to YouTube to watch videos to see what I could learn. And and 25 years ago, uh this is closer to 15 years ago at this point. Uh the information I saw on YouTube just wasn’t what I needed. So I started the Gardener Scout YouTube channel. I had a gardener’s guide blog and the intent was to get out researchbased quality information in a way that gardeners of all levels could understand and appreciate, but most importantly learn from and then be motivated to do it and to actually get out. And that’s one of my biggest pushes with my book, with my channel, with all that I do is to really motivate gardeners to garden. I think gardeners are among the best people on the planet and the more gardeners we can make, the better it’s going to be for all of us. Yeah. Seth, how long ago did you actually start the YouTube channel? And when you started, were you doing that consistently once a week or twice a week or whatever? And then um has that has your delivery or your technique or your style evolved over the years that you’ve been doing it to something that you’ve settled into now that you really like and feel comfortable with? Obviously, it resonates very well with a lot of people. But I’m just curious about your journey along YouTube to where you are today. Sure. Yeah. So it was about uh 15 years ago that I I started doing the blog and was really interested in that and that’s uh was shortly before I started get looking at YouTube and I initially started YouTube as a a backup to the blog and so I did a few videos it was just kind of exploring the YouTube process. I was doing most of my effort on the Gardener Scott blog. And so that was back in uh 2011. So I’ve been on YouTube for about 15 years, but I really wasn’t focused. And it was just a periodic I think in the the first year I did three videos and the second year I did four videos. I began doing one video a week and then about 2018 2019 I started doing two videos a week and then five years ago I added a weekly live stream that I do every Monday and that’s that was about the point uh that YouTube recognized me and and I was selected as a creator on the rise and I was highlighted on the YouTube trending page And that’s really when it took off for me. And I started getting thousand subscribers and then 200,000 subscribers and now I’m over 400,000 subscribers. And so it has evolved because as as you know in in your career as well on PBS and all of these uh other podcasts and and YouTube as well, you learn more as you do it more and you learn to do it better. And that’s where I am now. I feel that the quality I have now of my production, of my my delivery, and even of the topics I choose are are much better now, much more well-rounded than they were when I first started all those years ago. Do you feel like you’ve um kind of covered everything and now you’re like, well, how do I bring up this topic again, but do it differently? Have you hit that point yet? uh in in a few things, but but I look at gardening as being so expansive. You can never know everything, right? And so I’m I’m not after the views and I’m not after the subscribers. I’m at the point where I I really want to promote gardening and to supply for gardeners everything they could need. So I use top or I make videos of topics that no one else is making videos of because they’re not going to be viral. they’re not going to be super popular. So, I have the basic uh I had one a couple weeks ago on how to divide chives. That’s never going to be viral, but it is a necessary part of the gardening journey if you want to grow aliums in your garden and if you want to learn how to divide certain plants. So, that’s the approach I take is yes, there’s been a handful of videos that I have remade with updated information, but for the most part, I’m always looking for something new and different that nobody else is covering or that is is better. So, if somebody has a a video on the the five reasons you should have a raised bed, and someone else has a video on the eight reasons why you should have a raised bed, well, then I’m going to do a video on the 12 reasons that you can do a raised bed because there’s just so much information that really needs to be distributed. Yes, agreed. Well, I like your style. I like the fact that you’re just out there to educate and uh without any sort of other motivation, personal motivation. And not that there’s anything wrong with that, but sometimes that can uh influence what we talk about and why we do it. And I think your your your filters are thinking more generously than that. I guess maybe that’s Well, thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome. Well, we have uh we have some exciting news here because you have a book. This is your first book, I think, right, Scott? It is. Yeah, it’s my first published book. I think like a lot of authors, I’ve dabbled over the years, but this is the first one it’s been published. Well, it’s a great book. It’s called Guide to Raised Bed Gardening. No surprise there. Actually, Gardener Scott’s Guide to Raised Bed Gardening. Let’s clarify that. And um the cover, the front cover, these beautiful raised beds. Where is that? Is that in your garden? I would I would love to take credit for that. So, sort of. So that that’s actually the demonstration garden in Colorado Springs that the Horicultural Art Society maintains. And so I was a trustee for the Horicultural Art Society a number of years ago and visit that garden on a fairly regular basis. And so in preparation of the book, I’ve taken photos from everywhere I visited over the last two or three years. And when I I saw that garden in particular at the peak of production here in Colorado Springs, I took a picture of it in addition to thousands of others. So in preparation for the book, because I knew it was coming. It took about two years to finish that project. I took thousands of photos everywhere I visited, every state, every city to document what different raised beds look like in different areas. And when it came time to choose one for the cover, that was the one that my editor really liked. And coincidentally, I really like it, too. So, it’s it’s Colorado Springs at the peak of summer and really does go to show what you can accomplish with raised beds. All right. Well, let’s talk about some raised bed uh conversation here. You know, sometimes, I don’t know about you, but do you ever get the question from somebody that says, “Does the um cost outweigh the benefit of doing raised beds?” Do you get that question? Uh oh, yeah. All the time. In fact, I get that question about gardening in general because, you know, I have I have a greenhouse. I’ve got raised beds. But for me, it’s one of those things you budget for and you develop over time. And I think the benefits to gardening far outweigh the costs and and every hobby if you approach it from a hobby has the same question and the same answer. But but gardeners take it beyond the hobby level. And we actually become passionate about gardening and how can you put a price on your passion? And so that’s the way I approached it. Yes. I my mental health because I get to go out and garden and spend time out in nature. You can’t put a price on that. And I’m sure it it’s it’s lowering my blood pressure and maybe extending my life because of activity and the fresh air. And there, you know, there’s just nothing wrong with that. And as an organic gardener, I’m not exposed to any crazy chemicals. And so even that, I mean, even even if I barely got any harvest out of it that I could consume or, you know, didn’t have to spend money at the grocery store, I I would still find that the benefit far outweighed the cost because of the um intangible benefits of everything I just mentioned. Exactly. And and one of the things I think that’s misunderstood by a lot of gardeners, particularly new gardeners or gardeners that are thinking about getting into raised bed gardening, is that that cost isn’t going to be worth it because it’s an upfront cost. But once the bed is made, you get to use it for years and years and years. So if you essentially am advertise the cost of that bed over time, you know, I easily get 30 to 40 pounds of squash in one of my raised beds or, you know, a couple dozen pounds of tomatoes. And so if you look at the equivalent cost, if you went to the store to buy what you’re growing yourself, you make up the cost of a raised bed potentially within the first year. Definitely within the second or third year. Yes, indeed. And the and my the one that I get a lot is um I have these tomato cages that I make out of livestock panel. And you know, a livestock panel used to cost $20 and now costs 30 or more. Uh, but I can get one and a half panels out of it or cages. And um people like I could that’s just so expensive. I said this panel is going to outlast us. You know, these cages are going to be here long after we become compost. And if you advertise that as long as you garden, even if it’s for a few years, it was still far better than the little flimsy cone that your tomatoes outgrow. Scott, let’s move on to some of the benefits of using raised beds. And I there there are many this it could be a long list and uh we we do those beds for different reasons but for you what’s your standout reason for why you find them to be most beneficial as to as compared to other alternatives. Yeah. So there are so many benefits to raised beds that I think each gardener in every region can find a benefit that is maybe different than somebody else. It’s not the same best benefit for everybody. And so for me here in Colorado, we have terrible soil, less than 1% organic matter, very low in micro and macronutrients. And so to build a good soil and grow in a garden bed that’s in the ground, it takes years to develop that good soil. And so for me, a primary benefit is that you can purchase, design, make, blend, whatever soil you want in the beginning and you fill that raised bed with the good soil and you can start gardening right away. You don’t need to spend years making your bad soil better. You can start right away with the good soil and and your plants of course will benefit immediately because the soil really is the key to gardening success. And I love that part because as like you, I want people that are new to gardening to be successful at it and not feel overwhelmed because things didn’t have a positive outcome in that first year. And uh soil can have a lot to do with making or breaking your success. And as you said that with the raised bed, you can create that ideal soil. So I’m I’m right there with you. And one other thing I should have asked you earlier for those that don’t know, describe your your garden. Is it uh do you have different types of raised beds or is it one kind that you’ve settled on that you really love more than another? Just give us that picture, too. Well, it it probably comes as no surprise that I have raised beds of many different types and many of them, but I moved into the house I’m in now just over five years ago. This is actually moving into my six-year anniversary in this garden in a few months. And I did exactly what I recommend gardeners to do when I talk to them and in my book. I started small. So my my garden began with just two basic wooden raised beds. And then in the next year I put in six additional raised beds. And then in the following year a big square fully enclosed area with four sides each 25 ft long that were raised beds. And then I started adding some some metal beds from the kits. And then in the fourth year, I added some stone beds and some more metal beds. And then last year, I added another three beds. So when when you add it all up, I I have almost a thousand square feet of growing space just in my raised beds. And there’s wood, there’s concrete block, there’s galvanized steel, there’s the painted steel kits, there’s um stacked stone. I have hybrid beds where part of it is concrete and part of it is wood. Uh and then most recently I’ve been experimenting with the cement board uh to create a a much lighter weight raised bed. So uh a little bit of everything. I I’ll say you’re like a showroom basically of That’s right. You know, just you know what’s your what’s your pleasure? Come over here. I’ve got that to show you, too, which is very, I’m sure, comes in very handy for you depending on what it is you’re trying to communicate in a video or a blog post. Have you settled in on a on a preferred uh type of uh raised bed, whether it’s the material or the height or things like that? Uh yes, but there’s always a a caveat to these questions. It, you know, it depends uh it it depends on the situation. So, in my vegetable garden, I I prefer the basic wooden box made with 2×10 or 2 by 12 lumber, but that’s because I my back isn’t what it used to be. I injured it a number of years ago, and I can sit on those beds and seed and weed and thin and trellis. and I can actually relieve some of the pressure on my body by sitting or leaning on the raised bed. So, that’s my preferred method for that. But, but I’ve evolved. I use the the painted metal beds as actually an aesthetic part of my garden to separate one area from another. I really like rooms in a garden. So, so different areas of the garden or different rooms. I use metal colored beds for some of that separation. And then the aesthetic appeal of course as well the stone beds that I built over last year are just breathtaking. And so those will become perennial and annual flower beds to really just become a primary focal part of my garden. So so I have a lot of favorites. It’s like your children, you know, how do you pick your favorite child? Well, it depends on the day of the week and it depends on what they’re doing. And that’s kind of the way it is in my garden as well. Understood. All right. So, tell me about um as you’re communicating to your audience about uh someone who may want to be starting a raised bed garden, what is your advice for the considerations, the most important considerations for them as they’re contemplating where on their property they put their garden? What are the what are the main issues? Yeah. So, I think it’s important first to just ask the the basic question, why? Why are you gardening? And why do you want a garden bed? Not even to look at it from a perspective of why do you want a raised bed, but why do you want a garden bed? And it could be because you’re growing perennials. It could be because you want to grow food for your family. There are just so many reasons, but but you have to answer that basic question first because so many gardeners start by building a garden without a direction, without a plan, and then it doesn’t meet their expectations and they end up not becoming a gardener and it it lies for years until they sell their house. If you start with a goal in mind of the reason you’re gardening, that’s a good place to start because then you could look at those other factors. The primary information everywhere says you need to put your bed in full sun. But what if you want to grow shade plants? What if you want to grow a type of plant that doesn’t benefit from full sun? Where’s your water source? You have to look at all of those other things that are part of gardening that if you don’t think about it in the beginning could become a problem later on. Uh I have a big plot of land and I have 150 ft of hose to reach some of those back beds. Y well I actually walked and measured how far it was going to be because I didn’t even know if I could get a hose that long to stretch. Right. That’s what that’s the the key part is the observation, the patience, and then coming up with some plan of how you’re going to use it all. Well said. And one thing I would add to that and and I learned this early on in the in more than 20 years ago for me when we were when I was hosting my first television show and it starred raised bed gardens, but when we were creating the garden from scratch, we were just looking at people’s yards and where we could put the garden if we were to choose that that location. And one of the things that kept coming up was based on where the homeowners told us we could put the garden. I had to think about convenience and access to the house. You know, if you’re the gardener and that is your house and your garden is, you know, thousand feet away or I don’t know, 500 feet or 200 feet, whatever. There’s a point where at the end of your day and you’re tired and you’ve got your feet kicked up on the easy chair, you might opt to not go out there when you need to water. Exactly. pest inspect and things kind of go south because you miss one day, it’s easier to miss two and then next thing you know the garden has gone south on you. So convenience is one that I think we probably don’t give enough consideration to until we just go go for it and then we realize that probably wasn’t a good idea. And I like your point about, you know, that’s I talk about uh these considerations I think people need to think about when they’re citing their garden and what else to consider. But just what you said, the very very basic thing of why do you want the garden? What are you going to grow and why is that important to you? And that’s that’s one I kind of skip over because I assume we’re talking about food. But um I equate that to being the planner when you think ahead of time before you build out your garden versus the planter. Whereas, as you just said, gardeners are often times impatient and we just want to, you know, we want a place to stick that seed or that seedling in without giving much thought to the bigger picture or the, you know, the longer hall. Yeah. Exactly. And and that’s another reason why I recommend starting small with just you know I’ve been gardening for decades and I spent most of a year walking my garden space before anything was built and I still started with just two beds because I wanted to see how the weather patterns over the course of the year affected it. I wanted to see exactly what you said. How much effort is it for me to walk out my door to the garden to take care of those plants? And and by just having a couple beds in that first year along with some containers because I love container gardening as well, it gave me a good feel for my plot of land. And everyone’s plot is unique and different. And we can give you all basic information as we do, but it it really is important that each gardener learn how to garden in their bed, in their backyard, or wherever it happens to be. And they may discover they don’t like it. They may discover that they love it and they want to do more of that. That’s all part of the journey. Mhm. I’m going to just throw a quick uh couple quick topics at you related to sighting and considerations when you’re planting out your garden just to get your thoughts on it. Um general average spacing between your beds distance-wise. Yeah. So again, it gets back to how you are planning to garden. And so the I have two distances, two different distances between my beds. So, a lateral distance that I use is uh up 2 feet. And so, that two feet gives me ample room to walk back and forth, to move from bed to bed. And then I have the the primary vertical distance, which is just over three feet, and it’s close to 40 in. And that’s enough for me to push my wheelbarrow back and forth to be able to take the compost and the mulch or to fill the beds. And so I really look at it from a task perspective. What am I doing in this space? And I want to make it as easy as possible. Um planning ahead for potential critter threats. Um, do you put hardware cloth or do you what what kind of things do you do or have you done or do you recommend that people do? Oh, yeah. Again, it gets back to the uniqueness of your garden. What kind of problems do you have? And most people don’t even know the problems until they discover that they have a problem. So, I I always encourage gardeners to go to the master gardener office to uh find local gardeners and ask these kind of questions because I have gophers in my area. And when I first moved in, I had a serious gopher problem. So all of my beds have hardware cloth at the bottom of the bed to keep the gophers from burrowing into the bed. And you know, those type of things can save you years later when you lose an entire crop because the gophers dug into your bed. Yes, that is definitely part of the planning. And then the other type of pest as well, I’ve got deer, so I have to have some type of barrier to keep the deer away from my plants. You mentioned the the livestock panels earlier. I have livestock panels that I have bent into hoops that I place over my beds and I use those as a deterrent for the deer. Yeah. And I’ve got rabbits and so my beds are high to deter the rabbits from jumping into the beds. So, all of that was part of my planning that I learned during that observation period while I was figuring out what the best way would be to build my beds. I hope every soontobe raised bed gardener is listening to this and taking good notes because Scott is dead on the money with taking your time to plan ahead. And you will get paid back big time if you just take it slow and make these observations and plan into what you’re going to build out with these precautions as you know. And I when I Scott, when I built my big raised bed garden here 13 years ago, I had already had, you know, a good chunk of time under my belt with other raised beds, but I’d never experienced what I experienced subsequently here after I just shrugged off the fact that I was going to need to put hardware cloth under my raised beds until a few years in, moles had burrowed underneath and then started having a all you could eat buffet of all the earthworms and things in my soil. And I didn’t know it. I mean, I saw the, you know, the mounds that they make as they’re going about underground, barely underground, and they were all leading into my raised beds, and I thought, “Huh, that’s odd. Wonder where they are now.” And then when I uh was hand I love to hand water. So, I was standing over my beds one day and I had my watering wand down at the base of the plant and I’m watering it and I’m just watching the soil implode in deep into the, you know, the ground was giving way. The soil was giving way from all the tunnels they had excavated within the raised bed. And had I assumed that that was a possibility, I would have put hardware cloth in before I ever filled massive raised beds with a lot of soil. So eventually they moved on, but it was it was a I think it was maybe two seasons before that ever happened and I had to live with it. Yeah, I’m I’m sorry to hear that. You know, it’s just like the old cartoons where, you know, the the animal comes from below and pulls the carrot from the bottom. That’s exactly what it is. And and I saw that in my garden as well, luckily in a peripheral bed in the ground. And that’s what really showed me, yeah, there’s a problem here. I could see the plant shaking and then it just disappeared. And that’s very educational. Did you happen to film it? Uh, no I didn’t. I I do have some film of the the gophers crawling out of their holes and looking around for something to eat. Um, but I don’t have actually anything in in my garden beds. I wish I would have gotten that one. Do you have a a minimum height that you suggest people not go below? So, it depends on how you’re going to use it. For me, just because of my height, 16 in is a minimum height for me to sit comfortably or kneel in front of the bed. Um, but I have another area where the beds are 22 in high, and that’s where I’ve got my galvanized panels that are buried a little bit in the soil for extra deterrence for some of those pests. And that 22 in is ideal as well for sitting on the beds, but I can’t kneel as easily on those beds. So depending on if there’s any mobility issues that that a a gardener might have, I think that really does play in how high the beds should be. Now, if you don’t have those pests and if all you’re doing is growing shallow rooted plants, then 8 to 12 in is a minimum that that you could be growing it. Yeah. I’ve even said I’ve I did a show one time on on a community garden or segment was on a community garden in Philadelphia and it was on a their space was a parking lot, a vacated parking lot and they were building raised beds on the concrete and a lot of those raised beds were only 6 in and it was amazing. I mean, I was surprised at how well everything was growing in the summertime and 6-in raised beds on concrete. Yeah, absolutely. It as long as you match the plant to the bed, then it it can be any size. Yeah. Well, speaking of making these beds, we’ve got choices and you you again have the showroom of options there if anybody wants to get an idea. But, um, let’s just talk about the wood option for a second because there there’s a good diversity of options whether it’s treated, untreated, hardwood versus soft wood, uh, and what you can do to prolong the life and because wood is very available and somewhat affordable depending on the type of wood that you go with. What are the what are the things that you want to advise people to consider when they’re thinking about wood if that’s the the direction they’re going? Yeah. Longevity I think should be a consideration. It if you get the in my area it’s fur. If you get the basic untreated fur it will eventually break down. And so my beds are now those first beds are 5 years old. They’re holding up great, but I live in Colorado, which is a very dry climate. And so I can get 10 years out of a basic wood bed with no problem whatsoever. But for someone who lives in a much wetter region, it might only be three or four or five years for a basic untreated bed, which now means you need to replace those components. And that is a future cost I think a lot of gardeners don’t consider. uh and why some people think raised beds are not the the bed of choice because at some point you will need to replace it. You can definitely choose an option like cedar or redwood which are more resistant to decay decay but they are also a more expensive option. You have to weigh that future cost. They will eventually break down and need to be replaced, but it may be much longer than the basic wooden boards. I get a lot of people concerned about pressuret treated wood. I was actually part of a a study, you may have seen this, Joe, that was released last year by Oregon State University, and I I took samples of all of my beds and sent them to Oregon State. I worked a little bit with the team. So I I supplied my metal, concrete, stone, untreated wood, pressuretreated wood, soil samples as part of this analysis of whether pressuret treated wood can be used. And the results of the study showed that there’s no problem in a home garden using pressuretreated wood. They’re all copperbased now. And copper is a natural ingredient in most of our soils and plants use copper. extremely small amounts of leeching which had no effect on the plants whatsoever. And so that’s kind of a middle ground between untreated wood and the more expensive mahogany or redwood or whatever you want to use is a pressuret treated wood that can last a considerably long time at a reduced expense. Yeah, I was happy to see that too because there as you noted people have a kind of a prejudice against it just and rightfully so because when the it was treated with arsenic that’s a bit scary but fortunately we’ve moved on from that a long time ago. So it’s a viable option these days and much more affordable. Absolutely. You had mentioned in a previous part of this conversation you’ve got kind of a little bit of everything. You got a smorggas board of raised bed material as well and I and I think we are fairly familiar with most of the things that you’ve mentioned, but there’s two that I want to go back to or one that you mentioned that I want to go back to and that’s the concrete board. Is that what it’s called? That is the backing tile. Yeah, it’s it’s a cement backer board. So, it’s what’s used in construction typically in a shower and that’s what they uh attach the shower tile to. Yeah. And so it is uh cement. It does have depending on the the manufacturer, it might have some cellulose. It might have some other materials in it, but it’s primarily a cementbased product. And so what what I’ve been experimenting with is having that as a bed outside because it’s it’s it’s inexpensive when you compare that against the cost of a board. Yeah. It is really cost-effective. And so far, after more than a year of being exposed to my Colorado summer and my Colorado winter and heavy downpours in thunderstorms, there is no indication at all that it’s degrading at all. I don’t know yet the the ultimate longevity of it. That’s one reason why I’m I’m conducting these tests. But I’ve been very pleased so far with the results of that. That’s very good to hear. Um, it’s it’s a new option to me that I wasn’t aware of. So, I’m glad you brought that up and it’s in your book, too. Have you ever done straw bales? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve done everything. So, uh, yeah, I have a video on straw bales that, uh, I I did and and I do categorize that as kind of a a quasi raised bed because you can put multiple straw bales together. You can use the big straw bales and you can plant in them and grow in them and they can actually quite effective. So, I’ I’ve grown peppers and I’ve grown tomatoes. And so, while I’ve done the straw bales, I I really do focus on the good soil in my raised beds. Yeah. Same here. Scott, you spend a lot of time in your book, and rightfully so, about the soil, and we’ve already talked about one of the primary reasons of raised beds is to create the perfect growing environment and to get off to a fast start. And you can do that when you’re deciding what soil goes into that contained area. Um, we could talk an entire episode and more on just the soil aspect of it, but if we were to reduce the amount of time for that part of this conversation without trying to glaze over the important aspects, what would what would your admonitions be? What would be the key things uh as we’re looking at what goes into those raised beds to make that soil as productive as possible? Organic matter. Organic matter. organic matter. It it it really comes down to that. You know, I reference your perfect soil mix in my book and and my gardener Scott recipe is very similar. The idea being that a large component of your soil should be organic matter and it can be anything from worm castings to leaf mulch uh leaf mold to uh crushed leaves to dried grass clippings, uh manurses of all different types. Now, of course, there are caveats with each of these things that we would choose to put into our soil, but that’s that’s really the basic idea is just to try to increase the amount of organic in your soil because most soils don’t have enough or they don’t have enough variety of organic matter to really supply ample nutrients for the plants. We shouldn’t be feeding our plants. Too often I get asked that question, what should I feed my plant? And it’s like I got that question today on my liveream and I said I don’t I don’t feed my plants. I feed my soil and my soil feeds my plants and it all comes back to the organic matter. Gosh, I feel like I’m looking in the mirror here at least, you know, listening to myself talk. You’re so on the money there. Of course, and I can I 100% agree with those key things. Um, I also loved in your book that you talked about weighing the option of buying in bulk versus buying by the bag. Can you hit that again? Sure. Yeah, it it’s it’s really easy. And most gardeners uh do this. They’ll go to the the home center, the big box store. Uh they look for a sale hopefully and they’ll they’ll get their bagged products on sale and then they go and start to fill their raised bed. And they realize that a 1.5 cubic foot bag of potting mix does not go far when you’re trying to fill a raised bed that is 64 cubic feet. And so now all of a sudden you realize you have to buy 40 or 50 bags just to fill a single bed and the and the cost begins to skyrocket. Yeah. And so the alternative to that is to find a landscape supply company uh around here. I’ve got a couple of them. They’re rocky yards is what a lot of people call them as well because that’s where you go buy your your gravel. And they’ll often have mixes that are already put together. They’ve already got compost. They might have some humus. Uh there’s uh one near me that that uses um cotton meal as a a primary compost ingredient and they’ll bring it to you in a big truck and dump it. And the the dump trucks that I use hold 15 cubic yards and so I can order a dump truck load, dump it in my yard, fill a number of beds, and then get kicked off to an immediate start. much less effort and much less cost than trying to do it by an individual bag. Yes. So there’s that uh convenience uh much buying in bulk is much cheaper and you also have the opportunity to go look at it. You know, you can get your hands in it, you smell it, you can squeeze it. These are the criteria that I always coach people that are listening to me do to really get a sense that you’re going to get some good soil rather than finding out after it’s been dumped out of the dump truck and you never had a chance to inspect it beforehand. You can’t really easily put that back into the truck and have them take it back home. But the other thing that I learned, I was uh I worked with the US Composting Council for a long time. Oh, nice. Yeah. And um I I loved going to the annual conferences because you you really get to hear from all the compost makers on a commercial scale, but um I also got to meet and talk with some of those manufacturers that are putting them into the bags and selling them to the box stores and having candid conversations where they were frustrated as were their consumers because when you are under the gun or the demand to produce produce x number of bags per store, per state, per, you know, God only knows how many thousands of bags those are or pallets every week probably in the gardening season for sure. And and those when they’re manufacturing that material, it’s not coming from one single source in the US. They’re for cost sake, they’re regionally manufacturing them so they can cut down on their distribu distribution charges, but they’re also sourcing the material regionally as well. So what you are buying, Scott, in a bag potentially is under a certain product name may be very different from what I’m buying in that bag with that same product name because the source material where I live is much different than where you live. And so there’s a lack of consistency there. And sometimes they’ve had to settle. And this is coming again from conversations from the manufacturers themselves where they’re putting stuff in there that isn’t their first choice and they’re pushing it out before it’s really even ready. And so it hasn’t really broken down enough to not have the demand for nitrogen what from what’s in the bag stealing from the nitrogen that’s needed by your plants. And it’s a mess. So again, now just to be fair, that’s not always the case. It’s hopefully the exception rather than the rule, but it is a real thing. And people just don’t know that. They don’t they don’t you don’t know what you don’t know. And so when you’re buying in the bag, you’re trusting that you’re getting a good product. But that’s another element that no one ever talks about. Oh yeah, I completely agree. In a lot of the bags that that I have available to me, regardless of the brand name, Forest products is like the number one ingredient. Yeah. And and you don’t know what that means until you open up the bag. And sometimes that means pretty chunky pieces of wood. Whereas Yeah, totally agree with what your comment about the the bulk buying as well. You can go and hold it in your hand and let it sift through your fingers and see if you’ve got those big bulky chunks of wood like you might have in a unknown bag. Yeah, let’s talk about the watering. Um, are you one kind of watering technique guy or do you do different methods or what’s your what do you have to say about that? So yeah, I do have different methods, but uh you mentioned it and that’s the way I do it. I love hand watering. I I think hand watering is my preferred method because it gets me up close and personal to my plants. I can see how the plants are doing on a daily basis. I can see if an insect pest might have attacked it overnight. I can see if maybe disease might be raising its ugly head. I I can see so much about my garden as a whole by looking at each plant individually. And I do that through handwatering. So when I was talking about dragging the hose before I even put the beds, that’s because I’m hand watering. I’m dragging hoses through my garden and all of these beds. Now, of course, I’ve got four different hoses coming off of a single faucet because of the different areas that I’m watering. Uh but there are a few things. So, I’ve got a pollinator garden with a lot of uh perennial plants in particular, and I will do overhead watering in that area because the whole area does get about the same amount of water. But in my individual beds, some plants need more water, some plants need less water. And because my soil from year to year varies slightly as I do my amending, I can’t assume that all the plants in one bed are going to need the same amount of water as the plants in a different bed. Y and so it it gets me outside. Yeah. Some days it takes a long time to do the garden, but that’s all part of just the enjoyment of of getting out there and being being part of it. Well, and I think it’s actually more efficient because we know we need to water and we need to be checking on our plants. And if we can do two things at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I don’t know if you saw my head nodding up and down like a bobblehead when you were uh talking about being able to really observe your plants in the moment that you were right on there. And that’s one of my favorite things about it because without the need to hold that wand down by your plant for half a minute or something like that, how often do we just stand at one plant because we’re always chasing squirrels and we see something else and we’re down the trail before we know it. But that’s the one opportunity where you really you sort of need to stand still for a minute and what better way to do that while you’re there is to really look things over. I agree 1,000% on that. I was I was happy to hear you say that. Well, good. Good. And and I throw other garden tasks in as well. And you know, it’s a great time to weed. The raised beds because they’re higher. Yeah. You can see those weeds right in front of you. And so, yeah, I’ve got the water wand in one hand and I’m plucking out those little weeds with the other hand all at the same time while I’m looking at the plants. Multitasking for a gardener. Yeah. Before you even said the weed word, I that’s what I was thinking and then you said it. But yes, I can totally relate to that. And just one more one more um bit of trivia there. When I installed my raised beds, I had irrigation bibs installed for each bed. So each bed has its own dedicated spigot. And um I’m a I’m a big believer in soaker hoses and drip irrigation. I really appreciate the efficiency of that. But because I, you know, on automatic timers and especially when you’re traveling, that really pays off. But thankfully, I’ve been able to really back off on the traveling because I love being at home so I can be in my garden more. But I don’t use the um the timers on on the autopilot with the drip anymore because I don’t want that to take away from my time with my watering wand. Scott, I think I I think we’ve moved through a lot of good coverage here. Um, is there anything that I we haven’t talked about or I haven’t asked you that you want to bring into this conversation? Uh, yeah. When we talk about raised beds, I think so much focus goes into the vegetable garden and and you you said that yourself in the beginning that that is kind of the assumption of why you would have a raised bed. And one of the things I really tried to capture in my book was there are other options. You can have raised beds as that visual element in your garden. You can use raised beds for perennial plants, for fruit bushes. They there it’s not just for the vegetable garden. And that’s why I love my stone beds because they’re just it’s such a visual change in my garden when you look at one area where you’ve got the basic wooden beds growing the zucchini and the peppers and then you’ve got this other area with just a splash of color on every side in every hue because they’re cascading over the side of the stone. And you know, you got the the higher plants in the middle like you’re supposed to design a bed. And it just it’s it’s breathtaking. And so you can see in my book those kind of pictures with those kind of beds all over the place. Brick beds, stone beds, metal beds, concrete beds. There are just so many other options that go beyond a basic cut board that I I encourage gardeners to explore that part of gardening because they may discover something they didn’t even know they were interested in and it becomes a whole new pathway on their journey. Yeah. And it may be more appropriate for what their goals are and they didn’t even realize it until they learned about that. And I want to I want to echo what you just said about having the flowers and the colors in the raised beds as well. And my story to that and that will probably be a great way to wrap this up is uh you know I’ve always had you know a lot of native plants around but never really in the vegetable beds because that was the vegetable garden. But a few years ago, it dawned on me with the help of my uh farm manager who comes and works with me a few days a week to keep things in order. She’s a big flower grower. And we started having the conversation like, you know, we need to have more flowers in the vegetable garden. And I think it’s just having somebody tell me what I already knew that allowed that to really get put into motion. And once we did that, the first year we had flowers in and amongst the plants and in dedicated beds around the perimeter of my vegetable garden, it was a night and day difference. The garden came alive with insects and pollinators and birds and all the things that you want. Not to mention the color and the beauty and the chance to cut some of those flowers and take them in. But it was a game changer. And I can’t I I just kicked myself for taking so long to arrive to that point. But I can never see not doing that again. So, if anybody’s wondering if that’s a good idea, take it from Scott and me. And yes, that’s a great idea. Add flowers for a lot of reasons. Even if it’s just selfishly, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you’re going to do so much more for the biodiversity of your garden and its health and its productivity, too. Yeah, absolutely. I I have very very few pest problems, insect pest problems in my garden. almost none because of that that diversity that’s attracting all the predatory insects and the predatory animals that take care of the my pests before they become my pests. Excellent. Well, Scott, this has been a lot of fun and again I just I hate that it took us this long to get together, but we did and I love it. So, let’s not make it the last time we do that. Let’s do a a future conversation at some point not too far down the road. But thank you so much for your time today and congratulations on your new book and we’ll be looking forward to sharing that with our audience and um keep up the good work and for communicating your knowledge with a lot of gardeners out there. Thank you, Joe. It’s been a pleasure and I agree it’s a long time coming and we’ll definitely do this again. Well, I hope you enjoyed that and certainly thanks so much to Scott Wilson aka Gardener Scott for joining us today and sharing not just how to grow plants, but how to grow confidence and connection and really joy through gardening. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out Scott’s YouTube channel and social platforms because there are many hundreds of videos covering everything from composting and seed saving to even gardening philosophy. And if something in today’s conversation inspired you, leave a comment below because I would love to hear your thoughts. And if you enjoyed watching this podcast episode, well, there are more where this came from. And we’re adding new episodes here every week. And if you’re not subscribed to this channel, I hope that you will do that. And click the notification button also so you’ll know when we post our next video. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you back here again soon.