If you want to find out whether you have green fingers, raised garden beds are the way to go. Shopping for elevated garden beds is really easy, allowing you to choose either from beds that are built especially for you, or you can buy the different elements yourself and build your own. Raised beds are much easier to manage than any other type of garden bed. You don't have to worry about compressing any soil, and it is also easier to avoid pests and other garden issues like weeds.
How Do Garden Beds Work?
Before you start shopping for elevated garden beds, you should get to know how they work. Basically, you use an earth mixture that is made of compost and soil. This means you won't have any 'bad dirt' in your garden. Bad dirt is a serious issue that will prevent you from growing plants, and one that most urban gardeners face. Through elevated garden beds, it is also much easier to manage your water drainage. This means your plants can breath easily and grow to their full potential.
Most people shopping for elevated garden beds live in highly urbanized areas, meaning they have no natural soil available. However, it is also popular in countries like South America, where the soil is highly saturated, making it difficult, if not impossible, to grow plants. Thanks to the raised beds, however, you can grow whatever you want.
Placement:
You can place your plants very closely together because the aeration and drainage in your beds is so good. Hence, sprouts can populate much better and you also avoid weeds from growing, even though the area itself is much smaller. Various studies have now shown that a raised bed can yield between 1.4 and twice as many vegetables or flowers as traditional beds.
Try, however, to not overcrowd your seeds. You don't need to leave spaces available for you to step on, so you have a lot more space available. However, if you put too many seeds close together, the growth of your plant will be restricted.
Benefits:
One of the greatest benefits of these beds is that they essentially bring a garden to you. Furthermore, you don't have to bend as much when you plant, water, weed, or harvest. You can manage every element of your plant's life cycle in an effective manner. You can see exactly where more nutrients are needed as well, and you can make far more localized changes.
A lot of gardeners suffer from back pain the day after they garden. This is because they constantly have to bend over. Fortunately, with elevated beds, this is no longer an issue. So long as the bed is carefully designed and maintained properly, you should be able to comfortably garden. Plus, your entire outdoor space will instantly look much better. Whichever plant you grow in there, it will break the monotony of the concrete jungle most of us now live in. Plus, you will do your bit towards helping the environment as well.