Raised
bed gardening offers another way to do your gardening. As against the normal
form of gardening where you just sow seeds all over a wide area, raised bed
gardening employs several separate 'raised beds' of extra
soil in which the seeds are sown. Each 'raised
bed' is a portion of land where the soil is raised above the ground level. The
bed is normally enclosed by a short boundary wall made of either concrete, wood
or any other material.
The logic behind raised bed gardening is that it offers an opportunity to create
a microclimate at each raised bed depending on the type of plant to be planted
at that bed. The soil, mixed with compost, used in a raised bed can be changed
after every harvest and when new seeds are sown so that the soil is
always
rich in nutrients. Also, employing small, separate raised beds means that the
gardener can access al his plants without actually
walking on the soil which means the soil will not be compacted. Most people
employ raised beds with a 4 x 4 feet area. These raised beds are also used in
square foot gardening
where these beds are further divided into smaller areas.
Some beds are even made waist high which makes watering and tending to the
plants easier for the old and weak by eliminating the need for bending over the
plants. Raise beds also reduce weeding since weeds cannot
spread across separate beds. Raised bed gardening is especially useful in
places where the soil quality is very poor.
Besides, all these advantages, raised bed gardening also adds to the beauty of a garden by giving it a neat and well organized look. Owing to all these advantages, raised bed gardening has been embraced by a lot of gardeners and this form of gardening has gained a lot of popularity of late.