After Building How To: Raised Bed Gardening

By Jonathan Beltran

When you're through with building a garden bed, be sure to congratulate yourself because now that your garden is set in place you can start raised bed gardening. It may be a bit empty now, but through this article you can begin the fun part.

When you use the right kind of soil, manage watering and keep your plants healthy and disease free, you can build a great raised bed garden that will beat all your expectations.

Soil pH Levels

One of the safer techniques for making a raised bed garden is also a simple one. Use a mixture of one quarter yard soil, three quarters compost and sand. This puts a solid base to start your gardening and should prompt some nice growth. Always keep track of your soil's pH levels, too. If it's overly alkaline, nothing will grow.

Kill All The Weeds

The way your raised bed garden is setup should help prevent weeds, but since when have plans ever gone the way they were initially drawn? Put organic mulch over the top of your bed as an added protective measure.

If that doesn't work, try products for weed guarding to make sure those pesky weeds stay away. If this still doesn't stop them, don't worry too much. They're simple to get rid of, and remember gardening is ongoing work. There are going to be setbacks occasionally.

Reasonable Watering

It's just as unhealthy for plants to be watered too much as it is to be ignored. If plants stay wet for long period of time, disease will be more likely to form on the leaves and general bad health will result. To combat this, do your watering by hand and focus on the areas of the garden in which plants are buried and try to avoid watering surrounding areas as well.

Alternatively, you can pick up one of those irrigation systems. These handy contraptions use a dripping technology to water enough but not too much. Whatever you do, don't just hose down your plants.

Minding Your Raised Bed

Though raised bed gardening actually requires little maintenance, there are still things you have to stay on top of as a gardener. First, obviously you need to water your plants as necessary, being careful not to overdo it. Next, try turning the soil over periodically, adding in new organic matter as you go.

In the event that disease gets a foothold in your garden, empty the bed and replace the soil with all new soil/compost/sand mixture and reseat your plants. It's also important to keep an eye on your garden and make sure it's not tipping over time.

Low maintenance gardeners and lovers of nature enjoy raised bed gardening the most, but it's a great hobby for anyone. It's simple to pretty up your yard and grow some delicious vegetables all at once.

By following the tips above, you'll keep your garden beautiful and secure -- for the plants and you, as the owner. - 30422

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From Grass To An Organic Vegetable Garden On Your Front Lawn

By Susan Honeywell

Lawns may look good, but they are unproductive, require a lot of care, and are environmentally unfriendly due to the high use of pesticides and fertilizers necessary to maintain them. As even the White House has discovered, turning a lawn into an organic vegetable garden is a much better use for the land.

Don't be put off by the idea of organic vegetable gardening being a strenuous and unrewarding physical activity involving lots of tilling. If you follow this easy guide and some easy principles, you won't have to do any tilling and you'll turn your lawn into a garden with real ease.

Start by marking off the area for your organic vegetable garden with string. The White House's vegetable garden is about thirty feet by thirty feet square, which is enough to feed a large family. But to start, you could do with a quarter of that space. Water the area thoroughly.

Cover the area with a six inch thick mix of sand or gravel, old grass clippings, soil, and some ready-made organic compost or manure. This will ensure a solid nutrient base for your organic vegetables to grow on in years to come. Cover everything with cardboard, or with several layers of newspaper. This cover will eventually become compost too.

Now build a raised bed frame around the whole area for your organic vegetable garden, providing for walk paths if the area is big. It's best to use solid, untreated wood planks. You can add dividing frames if you like. The previous paper layer needs to stick out from the sides of the main frame.

Add a mix of organic compost, soil, and pebbles until the frame is full. This is the layer that your plants will grow in, and that you will replace with your own compost as time goes by. But for now, you'll have to buy compost to start your organic vegetable garden.

You should now leave everything as it is for at least a couple of weeks, ideally for a month. In this time, your old lawn and the organic materials on top will decompose, with the help of earthworms that will return to the previously sterile earth, and everything will turn into a fertile mixture for your seeds.

Now is the time to plant baby plants known as seedlings, or alternatively seeds. If you don't have any available from a windowsill you can get seeds and seedlings from shops, from neighbours, or over the internet at specialized organic vegetable gardening retailers.

Regarding the herbs and vegetables to pick for your lawn turned new garden, go wild and take whatever you prefer. Don't be afraid to leave out some common plants and go for lesser known crops, the variety of plants available to the home grower compared to the supermarket is staggering.

It's recommended to involve any kids that live in your area in the planning of the organic vegetable garden. This should of course include your own children, but also any other kids in your neighbourhood that your family is on friendly terms with. They will be engrossed in the activity, and you will get some help to transform that lawn into a garden.

Starting a compost heap is just as important as the other steps to a perfect organic vegetable garden. For that you need to pile all your garden clippings and non-animal kitchen waste into a wooden frame or a special composting box and water. After a while, you will have more compost for your plants. - 30422

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