Here's my raised beds..
The object for me with my raised beds is,
the area we put the garden *well, the previous
owners of the house had a wee~garden there and it flooded constantly..* and we wanted to keep the garden here because it gave up the optimal sun light from sun up to sun down, so we kept it in the same spot...
And just raised the beds...
I initially made the beds for my aging mother,
she loves to garden, but can't get up as well as she used to.. and we put boards on the sides, so she could sit and dig and garden...
and planting and picking was right at waist high level...
And for that it works out really good...
We filled it with sifted topsoil and I ammended some with homemade compost and a load of composted manure brought in...
Hind sight of reading some info 3 years later,
that I probably should have filled it straight with the compost and manure and left only a wee~bit of soil for it..
*but I of course didn't read that until it was too late..*
~~~~>I'll reference to that in a bit...
Raised beds are warmer to warm up in the
spring time, faster to dry out when there's heavy or continual rains...
And they stay warmer when it's chilly out in
spring or a colder summer....
But in reference to above they are also veryyyy hot in the summer, and any compost or manure you put in either gets "eaten up" by the
plants you
plant or the hot "cooking temps" *which is not a bad thing, just that you have to treat a raised bed as if it's a pot/or container and water accordingly or shade as nessessary...
*like tomatoes, although they love the warmth and sunshine can also get sunscald and heat up too much where their leaves curl up for protection from the full sun and too much heat in their soil...*
But fill with alot of compost/aged manures you can, because you'll end up having to replace it..
as it's used up...
I put down landscaped fabric under my first two beds... (my first picture of the first 2 beds)
but I wasn't there for when they put down the wood for the second set of 3 beds, and didn't get any down... and I have a terrible problem with that runner root type grass now because of it.. I don't in the first bed... but thats' what happens when you leave to men alone that don't garden to do the work... :rolleyes:
but they did make an AWESOME job on building them, and I am not complaining...