Ready to put your green thumb to good use? Try making your very own raised garden. If you’re a natural gardener or if you’re a beginner, you can create a raised garden that will make your backyard look like a professionally landscaped dream. Here are six steps to creating a fabulous raised garden.
What you’ll need
2 8-foot 2x12 boards
2 4-foot 2x12 boards
3 ½-inch deck screws
12 32-quart bags of potting mix
Shovel
Cordless drill
Step 1
Mark off a 4-by-8 foot rectangle where you would like your raised bed to be. Pull up the grass and ensure that the ground is level. Some people prefer not to pull up the grass, figuring it will die eventually, but leaving the grass poses the risk of weeds growing there later on.
Step 2
Fasten the boards at the corners by screwing together in 3 or 4 spots with 3-inch desk screws. Then, pre-drill the holes to make building the bed easier and to prevent the wood from splitting.
Step 3
When you have completed building the frame, look to see that it fits level on the ground and doesn’t move back and forth. If it does move, then push the frame aside and level any high points in the soil with a shovel.
Step 4
Put your frame back into the spot you’d like and fill it with the potting mix. You can purchase garden soil or potting mix in bags or you can mix your native soil with homemade compost. Just mix half soil and half compost.
Step 5
Wind a hose that is at least 25 feet up and down the bed for easy watering. Hold your hose in place with pins used for landscape fabric or you can create your own pins from 1-foot lengths of baling wire that’s folded in half.
Step 6
Choose the veggies and plants that you’d like in your garden and place them alongside the soaker hoses. Mulch your plant bed with an organic mulch to keep your soil hydrated and to prevent pesky weeds. Don’t use fine mulch like compost, because that can clog soaker hoses. Turn on your soaker to water the bed deeply. You may have to use a sprinkler the first time to make sure the soil is moist evenly throughout.
Enjoy your fabulous raised garden!
What are you going to plant in your new raised garden? Contact us and let us know!
