Vegetable Gardening (14 page)

They warm up quickly.
Because more of the soil in raised beds is exposed to the sun, the soil warms early and dries out faster, allowing for early planting and extended harvest seasons.

If you're in a hot climate and have sandy soil, raised beds may not be for you, because they'll dry out and heat up too much.

They reduce your work.
By growing your vegetables in raised beds, you can maximize your fertilizing and watering so that more nutrients and water are actually used by the plants rather than wasted in the pathways.

They're easy on your back and knees.
If you design the beds properly (about 18 to 24 inches high and no wider than 4 feet), raised beds can make vegetable gardening a lot more comfortable. You can sit on the edge and easily reach into the bed to weed or harvest. You can even cap the edge to make it more benchlike.

They're attractive.
You can make raised beds in almost any shape you like — rectangle, square, triangle, circle. Your garden can take on a whimsical design with a little creativity. Just keep the width less than 4 feet so you can easily reach the center of the bed without stepping on the soil.

Wooden raised beds should be made of rot-resistant woods, such as redwood or cedar, or recycled plastic timbers. I like to use two 2-x-10 boards for the sides, and then I anchor them with lag screws at the corners with short 4-x-4 posts buried a foot deep. (You don't necessarily need the posts, however.) If you plant several raised beds, leave at least 3-foot-wide paths between them for access. (I discuss garden paths in more detail later in this chapter.)

Some gardeners use pressure-treated wood or creosote-treated railroad ties to construct raised beds; check with your local lumberyard for these materials. I prefer not to use woods treated with chemicals. They'll last a long time, but research has shown that some of these chemicals leach into the soil and can adversely affect your plants.

The one downside of permanent raised beds is turning the soil. Lifting a tiller onto the bed can be difficult, so they're best turned by hand with an iron fork. (I like to "fluff" my beds each spring with an iron fork.) You also can use a minitiller, which I discuss in Chapter 20.

In dry areas such as the desert Southwest, the traditional bed isn't raised — it's sunken. These
waffle beds
are created by digging into the soil about 6 inches deep and making a small wall of soil around the outside edge of the bed. This design allows the bed to catch any summer rains, protects young plants from the drying winds, and concentrates water where the vegetables grow.

Spacing your plantings properly

After you know what you're planting and how to arrange the plants, it's time to talk spacing. Make a list of the different types of vegetables that you want to grow, and then pay attention to these columns in Table A-1 in the appendix:

Plants/Seeds per 100 ft. of Row:
This column tells you how many plants/how much seed you need to purchase.

Spacing between Rows/Beds (Inches):
This column includes the ideal distance you should leave between rows or beds of different vegetables. This is usually a little more than the distance you should leave between plants.

Spacing between Plants (Inches):
In this column, you find the ideal distance to allow between individual vegetable plants within a row or planting bed.

Average Yield per 10 ft. of Row:
This column shows you how much you can expect to harvest.

The vegetable spacing information that I provide in Table A-1 in the appendix is more like guidelines than hard-and-fast rules. If you're growing on raised beds or growing dwarf varieties (see Part II for examples of these types of varieties), you can plant a little closer together, because you'll be concentrating the fertilizer and water in a smaller space.