It’s the perfect time to think about gardening if you haven’t already! I wanted to share a fun weekend project that my husband and I did together, with the help of the kids: a Raised Bed Garden.
Let me start this off by saying: I am not a gardening professional AT ALL. This was my first real try with a garden beside growing things in pots I bought at the store. So if you have any tips, I’m all ears.
The reason I wanted to to a raised bed garden was to be able to have organic soil for my garden. We moved to a new home right before we did the garden and Pulled up some unkept bushes from the backyard. I had no idea what the previous owners had done to the soil so I decided a raised bed garden would be best!
Benefits of Raised Bed Gardens:
- Less Back and Knee Strain. It’s surprising how much back and knee strain can happen just by weeding a garden, especially a large one, and this can take a serious toll over time. A raised bed, especially ones that are at least 12″ tall, can help.
- Fewer Slugs. Slugs can climb, but the tall sides of a raised garden box slow them down and provide an opportunity to stop them in their tracks. Many gardeners swear that slugs won’t crawl over copper flashing, which can border your box.
- Longer growing season: Raised beds warm up more quickly in the spring and drain better (assuming the soil is properly prepared)
Here’s What You Need:
- Raised Bed Garden (you can either buy a simple one or make it) we bought one
- Raised bed soil (bunches of bags depending on how big your garden will be, we used 8 bags)
- Garden Liner (we forgot this so it does not make it or break it)
We started off by ripping out the existing weeds, grass and bushes. This was the hardest part. Then loosened up the soil where the raised bed garden would go. We measured to ensure we cleared enough of the area.
Then we got to work building the raised bed garden. 
It was pretty simple!
After it was built we filled it with soil and got to planting! I decided to create an in garden compost in the middle of the garden using the milk crate method. Hindsight let me know I should’bve created a path to the compost or put it in the front so I wouldn’t have to step inside the garden to add things to the compost.
I will say that soil was extrememly rich and the worms were very happy and stayed in the compost.
If you want to see how my in garden compost was going after 30 days, check out the video here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=xu-D6bqi_60&feature=emb_logo