Get Rid of Your Gardening Aches and Pains With Raised Beds!
Love to garden but finding that age is restricting your ability to manage your pride and joy as well as you did? As a baby boomer, I know how you feel. The knees and back don’t recover from the bending like they used to, do they? What you need is some lateral thinking to allow you to keep gardening and I have the answer… raised beds.
To allow for easy reach you need to build your bed to about 2 feet high and 3 feet wide, this is easily done with a timber frame. This eliminates any kneeling and decreases bending for us as we get older, more importantly it also gives anyone confined to a wheelchair the opportunity to enjoy doing some of the light maintenance work in their garden.
What other benefits do you get from this form of gardening? Let’s see… there’s the removal of soil problems, greatly improved pest and weed control, the above mentioned ease of access and the increase in your crop harvest.
You’re not restricted to just growing vegetables of course, you can grow just about anything in your raised beds. There’s different types of fruit, the huge variety of herbs and the even larger number of flowers. Any plant that needs a well drained soil is a candidate for your new garden.
Because you’ll be planting your seeds or seedlings much closer together, you reduce the amount of water required. The combination of planting closer and less water will give you the extra benefit of far less weeds to worry about, because you’re not providing them with ideal growing conditions…. space and light.
Raised beds can be used to extend the growing season, making it easier to start seeds outdoors earlier, and grow later in the season. This is a great way to get even more produce out of the area in a season.
You’ll be able to use rich, well composted soil in your raised beds, so any type of soil problems you’ve had in your garden become a thing of the past. This way of gardening allows you to overcome any shortcomings you have in your soil.
As a gardener, you’ll also appreciate that you don’t have to walk on your raised beds very often, so the soil isn’t getting compacted like it normally would, this lets your plants develop stronger roots. Your plants will show their appreciation by producing a bigger, more luxurious crop.
Diseases and pests are easier to control in raised beds. Since you’re starting with fresh soil, it’s less likely to be contaminated with diseases that could infect your plants. If your plants do become infected, you can simple dispose of the soil in that bed and start again from scratch.