5 Benefits of a Raised Bed for your Texas Kitchen Garden

So you want to grow food and you’re thinking about different methods. Great! Raised beds are a great way we recommend growing food for homeowners with small spaces, i.e. not a farm with acreage. Here we will discuss what a raised bed is and 5 reasons we think they are the best approach.

First off, what is a “raised bed”?

The term "raised bed" just means a garden bed that has been given a structure on the sides to hold quality soil above the native ground. That structure can be wood, metal, stone, brick, plastic, anything really. The term raised bed does not mean a bed up on legs, though it is commonly mistaken for that. An important feature is to have your raised bed soil touching the native earth, which allows earthworms and other important helpers to reach your garden. This is one of the reasons we build ours without any type of bottom. That’s right; no chicken wire, no boards, no landscape fabric. We are lucky in Texas not to deal with underground mammals invading our garden, so no bottom is necessary. If you have thick grass or weeds, often using cardboard (that breaks down over time) is the only bottom you need. So, why go to all this effort? Food crops such as veggies, fruits and herbs, are just plants anyway. Why not just plant them directly into the ground? Great question!

In farm food growing, farmers amend the native soil with rich composted nutrients several inches deep with a tiller to create a great environment to grow veggies in rows. Since the rest of us have day jobs and not a farm, for our home kitchen gardens we cheat a little. By creating a "raised" bed frame and filling it with high quality soil, we can gain similar advantages to the tilling approach, without the acreage required for row planting. Here are 5 advantages to using a raised garden bed in your Texas edible garden:

1) Raised beds allow us to plant a lot in a little space.

This is called intensive planting. By using a raised bed, we are bringing in high quality soil and piling it up vertically. This improved soil (we recommend 8 or more inches deep) allows roots to stretch more easily downward and use horizontal space as well, allowing our veggie plants to be planted much closer together.

2) Vegetables, fruits and herbs like good drainage.

The improved soil inside your raised bed should have qualities allowing it to both hold moisture and drain well. Our native soils in central Texas are notoriously poor for that. They are made of largely inorganic, hard clay, with solid limestone a few inches underneath. Designed properly with the right soil, a raised bed should also offer good drainage, which is exactly what your plants need to thrive.

3) It’s a tad less back-breaking.

Since we tend our kitchen gardens by hand several times a week, and we want gardening to be fun and comfortable, the height of a raised bed can help. Whether it’s a foot high, or you go whole hog luxury on the design and make it 2 or 3 feet high, that extra height makes it more comfy to tend on a regular basis.

4) Better to reduce weeds and grass creeping.

Anyone with a zoysia or bermudagrass lawn knows about the grass creep into the flower beds we line around our home. Sometimes adding a border, such as a metal edging can help. But what a pain! With a raised garden bed for your vegetables, you have an automatic edge boarding your plants. Also, since the soil is several inches deep, when grass does finally peep up, it’s normally one sprig at a time and can be easily pulled. After a couple years it’ll be weakened enough to be easily managed.

5) They can be absolutely beautiful.

A raised bed kitchen garden can be just as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional - and we want everyone to rethink how they grow veggies in this way! The days of the sad little 4x4 box at the back of the fence are long gone. Your raised bed kitchen garden should be designed in a way that suites your style and is a beautiful extension of your outdoor living area. It should be a place you love to go visit to grab a tomato or some herbs to add to your dinner plate. It can be bordered with elegant hardscaping for easy barefoot gardening. With all the material and size options, it can be anything you want and should be uniquely you!

So we hope you consider a raised bed design for your home kitchen garden this year. They are hard work to set up, but are functional as well as attractive, can grow happy plants and feed your family 12 months a year.

If you are on a tight budget, check out our download for your own raised bed DIY, soil, plants and all, under $200! And if you are ready for a wonderful raised bed kitchen garden to fit your family and style, we can help you get there every step of the way, starting with a home consultation. Let us know how we can help.

Happy growing!