Create raised bed correctly: Calculate your material consumption - Calculate Now

Many garden owners are not really happy with their green outdoor space when it comes to planting or creating a vegetable patch. For example, if you own a city garden with a lot of gravel in the subsoil, or if you live in a region with heavy soil, you would first have to go to a lot of trouble and expense to improve the existing soil.

It is better to use a method that has long been forgotten, but is now back in vogue: a raised bed.

Advantages of a raised bed

Clearly, the advantages of a raised bed outweigh the expense of cultivating a normal ground-level garden area:

Better quality substrate for better plant growth.

Regardless of the region in which the garden is located, the substrate for filling the raised bed can be chosen completely freely. For this purpose, several layers are placed in the raised bed, including compost of various degrees of maturity. If the filling is done correctly, then later inside the raised bed constantly running composting processes that lead to warming of the substrate and guarantee steady flow of nutrients. The warm soil and the good supply of nutrients ensure good plant growth and a richer harvest.

Extended planting and harvesting season

The heat released by the composting process inside the raised bed will allow for much earlier seeding or planting. Of course, the outside weather must also be taken into account. This gives the plants a significant head start in their development phase. Fruit set occurs much earlier and ripens much better. Likewise, this can extend the harvest season, depending on the type of plant.

Fertilization is not necessary

A raised bed not only provides higher crop yields, but also saves the annual use of fertilizers. The compost substrates introduced constantly provide nutrients to the planting for several years. This eliminates the need to apply additional fertilizers and is therefore easy on the wallet.

Easy pest control

Due to the elevated position of the raised bed, plants are much easier to control for pests such as aphids or they are detected very early. The dreaded large slugs are hardly ever encountered. This is because, depending on what material the raised bed box is made of, the voracious pests prefer to avoid this barrier. Voles have no chance at all to get to the young roots of the seedlings in a raised bed. To ward off these rodents, the raised bed is laid out and secured at the base with a tightly meshed wire before it is filled.

Work that is easy on the back and joints

Especially the somewhat older hobby gardeners will not want to miss the raised bed. The comfortable working in an almost upright position is easy on the back and knee joints. Likewise, a seated work is possible.

Create a raised bed: The principle

A raised bed is very popular in the kitchen garden, but is just as suitable for ornamental plants. For example, areas in the garden or courtyard can be planted, the bottom of which is closed with a layer of paving or tar. Raised beds are also popular for saving space or bringing plantings closer to sunlight.

A raised bed is a raised growing area and is usually square or rectangular in shape to make the most of the space in the garden. Raised beds can also be placed as decorative objects in a round shape, for example, in the lawn.

Designing and building a raised bed

Raised beds can be made from a wide variety of materials. The most common is untreated wood (for example, larch or Douglas fir), but frames made of metal, quarry stone or plastic are also well suited. Very often you can also see raised beds made of wicker. With a self-built raised bed, you meet your own needs and can give free rein to your imagination.

In hardware stores and online stores, there are now also ready-made, high-quality kits, for example, made of wood, to buy.

Indicative prices for ready-made wooden raised bed kits: from €249.00, size 100 x 80 x 80 (e.g. www.hochbeetbausatz.com).

If you want to garden comfortably, you should build your raised bed at table height, about 80 cm high. The location for vegetables, fruits and herbs should be chosen as sunny as possible. Ornamental plants, on the other hand, are selected according to the location where the raised bed will be created.

For wheelchair users, raised beds are the only way to garden. For this purpose, the best option is wheelchair accessible raised bed tables, such as those sold by the company Hochbeetgarten. These raised bed tables are made of durable and weather-resistant aluminum.

The correct filling of the raised bed

A raised bed is filled with various layers of coarse branches, grass clippings, as well as compost in various stages of maturation. The layers are filled in the following order:

First layer (about 20 cm).

To protect against voles and moles, the bottom of the raised bed is lined with a close-meshed wire. This is followed by coarse branches, twigs and undecomposed compost as drainage.

Second layer (about 20 cm)

Grass sod, grass clippings, leaves or mixed garden waste are placed in a thin layer.

Third layer (approx. 10 cm)

Now follow semi-mature compost or rotted manure (for example, cow or horse manure).

Fourth layer (approx. 30 cm)

On top as the last layer, a mixture of good garden soil and fine, well-decomposed compost is now added.

A composting process is now initiated in the layers, which reduces the volume of the contents by decomposition and causes the existing soil to settle. Therefore, compost or worm humus may need to be added in the spring.

It is also advantageous to add compost and earthworms to the soil so that the entire contents are well loosened and enriched with worm humus at the same time.

After about 5 years, all the organic components will have decomposed and rotted, so the raised bed will need to be refilled with new layers.

Visually, there are no limits to the design of a raised bed. Whether you use ready-made kits or get creative yourself: Let your creativity run wild. How about a self-painted raised bed, for example, which can also be creatively embellished by the children: With a great splash of color, gardening is twice as much fun!