Raised Bed Gardens for Everyone.

Have you ever wanted to garden but learned that your soil was not right? Maybe it’s too acidic or too alkaline. It’s so messed up in fact, that it would cost a fortune and take 10 years to correct it naturally.  That’s what happened to Jeanne Grunert.

Ever resourceful, Jeanne went looking for the solution to her crummy soil and decided upon raised bed gardening.

As Jeanne puts it, “Raised bed gardens proved to be the savior of my dreams of growing delicious fresh vegetables on my farm. Because I could control the soil inside each raised bed garden, I didn’t have to worry about the poor soil on the rest of my farm”

I’m a huge fan of raised bed gardening. In fact, I created my own raised beds from cedar fencing earlier this year.

Why Raised Beds? Here Are a Few Ideas From the Book

• // They offer a tidy, space-saving way to grow delicious, healthy fresh vegetables right in your backyard.
• // It’s a self-contained garden space that can be easier to work with than a larger plot.
• // You start off with better soil and a weed-free area.
• // Raised beds warm up more quickly in the springtime than the surrounding areas, creating a microclimate that’s perfect for earlier planting.
• // You can extend the growing season by using simple techniques to cover the frame.

A Thorough Book to Help With Planning

This book is extremely thorough about the planning and building process of raised beds. It will not teach you what kinds of vegetables to grow in them, spacing techniques or pest control tricks. What you will learn is how to decide if a raised bed vegetable garden is right for you, and then how to implement a plan.

You will learn things like:

Location – Whenever you’re planning a construction project, location is always the first decision you’ll have to make, and a vegetable garden is no different. Where should you locate your raised bed vegetable garden?

Size – How big will your garden be? A few raised beds go a long way for a small family. How many do you need?

Water – What are your water requirements and are you near a water source? Learn from my experience and don’t fool yourself, packing water to the garden is no fun!

Soil – Where you can purchase the kind of soil you need for a raised bed? What kind and how much will you need? Get help with determining costs.

Next comes the design phase with helpful tips about box size, pathway choices and whether you should buy a raised bed kit or build your own with purchased or recycled materials.

Get the most from your raised bed vegetable garden

I especially enjoyed Jeanne’s suggestion of extending your growing season by converting your raised bed garden into cold frames. These are basically mini greenhouses, built right on top of your raised beds. I say built – but it’s actually much simpler than that, and following her directions, you can have frost protection over your beds in no time.

If you have poor soil or just need a way to begin gardening today, then creating a Raised Bed Vegetable Garden is for you. Jeanne Grunert’s new book is loaded with tips to get you started.

Buy it on Amazon: Plan and Build a Raised Bed Vegetable Garden

You can visit Jeanne over at her website: Home Garden Joy where she shares other terrific gardening tips.

There are affiliate links in this post. I was given a free e-copy of Plan & Build a Raised Bed Vegetable Garden in exchange for this review. The opinions are entirely my own.

Other gardening posts from PreparednessMama: Starting a Garden from Scratch – Gardening for Food Production