PORTLAND, Maine — Since vegetable gardening is all the rage right now, we continue our series on what you need to know to get growing.
Raised flower beds are a popular choice, as you can locate them just about anywhere there is full sun, whether you have bad soil there, or even no soil at all.
Here are some of the advantages of raised beds over in ground gardens.
Raised beds:
- Have better soil structure and drainage compared to ground-level gardens.
- Offer a head start on gardening by warming up the soil earlier in the Spring.
- Stubborn perennial weeds can be less of a problem in raised beds than in other gardens.
- Allow you to bring the soil up to a more comfortable working level, in other words, you don't have to bend over quite as much.
Mark Faunce, the Chairperson of the Maine Flower Show has been offering some tips from his own raised bed gardens. He has constructed quite a few trellises for his cucumbers and peas. He says you don't have to go out and buy something expensive to get veining vegetables to climb.
He also suggests you give some serious thought to watering, since raised beds drain faster and therefore need more water. Faunce has set up a drip hose that snakes through his gardens, and he has them on a timers so that the plants gets watered daily, whether Faunce is home or not.
One other little tidbit: if you are growing an invasive herb or fruit, such as mint, oregano, or strawberries, they could take over your entire garden if you don't do this. Plant them in a large plastic planter first, and then put the whole thing into your garden soil. The planter will keep the roots from spreading everywhere.
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UPDATE: Here's how Mark's plants came out!
