Raised beds are a simple and effective way to garden in urban spaces. They can fill out a landscape and provide valuable growing space for vegetables, fruit, herbs, and flowers.
Kept neat and tidy with mulched pathways between raised beds this garden looks great, is inexpensive to implement and maintain, and is highly productive.
This urban garden is outfitted with a series of raised beds and containers. Brought to life by flowering and edible plant species. Thanks to Cindy Ringheim for sharing these images of her garden in Calgary, Alberta.
Benefits of Raised Beds
Weed Control. Unlike growing in the existing soil in your garden/ yard, you can fill your raised beds with fresh soil. Fresh soil and soil mixes do not contain any weed seeds, which means that weeds won't take over. Raised beds can also be planted more densely, which shades out weeds from germinating while also keeping the soil cool and reducing water evaporation from the soil surface (Miernicki, et al., 2018).
Improved drainage. Raised beds create better growing conditions for your plants, allowing for drainage of excess water after large rainfalls or accidental overwatering.
Better Soil. Planting a garden directly in the ground limits you to using the soil that’s already there. With raised garden beds, you can use specialized soil mixes that can optimize growing conditions (Miernicki, et al., 2018).
Pest Control. You can keep out critters such as ground hogs, squirrels and moles easily.
Portability. If you decide to change the layout of your yard you can easily moved your raised bed around.
Accessibility. Raised beds make gardening tasks watering, pruning, and harvesting easier (Miernicki, et al., 2018).
Higher Yields. In general, raised gardens have been found to produce more fruit and vegetables that in-ground garden beds (Miernicki, et al., 2018).
Longer Growing Season. Your gardening season is determined by the temperature of the soil. The soil in a raised garden box will warm up much more quickly in the spring than the ground soil, and will stay longer warmer in the fall.
Aesthetically Pleasing. Your raised garden beds will always look neat and tidy.
For more information on growing in raised beds, please visit this online resource through the University of Florida. - Raised Beds Benefits and Maintenance.
If you would like more information on ordering raised garden beds through the RHOA, please click here to fill out a short questionnaire.
Citations:
Miernicki, E.A., Lovell, S.T. and Wortman, S.E. (2018), Raised Beds for Vegetable Production in Urban Agriculture. Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems, 3: 1-10 180002. https://doi.org/10.2134/urbanag2018.06.0002
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