It’s March, and if you follow me and live in the Midwest, you’re thinking about spring planting. Fresh, sharp radishes and scallions. Tender leafy spinach. Some crunchy asparagus and maybe even some oysters from the mushroom logs.
Each year, our farm offers certified organic seedlings that people can either order ahead of time online, or shop for in-person at the farm on the day of the sale. I’m also offering a garden design workshop at our local co-op, so I know folks are getting excited…or anxious? Or both. When it comes to growing food, flowers, herbs, and fruit, there is a learning curve that doesn’t really straighten out completely. Not with climate change. Not for those of us who are removed from agricultural life for generations. It’s one of the hardest things to pick up and learn from scratch.
Yet, a lot of you are doing it. Without pay. Some of you, without familial or community support. You’re like me. Stubborn, obsessed, and hungry for the feeling of rich soil and abundant growth. Hungry for connection, for the brain to be quiet while the body does what it’s made to do. I’m painfully aware of how few of us are prepared to meet our own needs and those of the greater community. How few of us growers there are left, and how the needs for food access only intensify. How easily knowledge is lost, and how difficult learning new skills can be.
I’m here to redistribute the knowledge I have where it’s wanted. And while it’s generally best to encourage any attempt to step into the field of botany, horticulture, and food production, I also have seen a lot of those attempts result in an abandoned eyesore. An eyesore that, if not reclaimed and transformed, can be the nail in the coffin of someone’s journey with growing food. They label themselves as terrible with plants, and move on. That’s fine, and inevitable to some degree, because it’s not for everyone and it can’t be. But I know, deep down, a lot of those folks would have made great gardeners if they had some support, guidance, and encouragement to make it past the first, or second, or even third failed gardening season.
If that’s you, listen up. Because what I’m about to say could save you money, time, and frustration. Your dreams of lush plants growing happily in a well-functioning soil food web are less far-fetched than your other dreams of obtaining substantial wealth. However, you may need to ditch the idea of permanent, boxed-in raised beds in order to achieve it.
When raised bed gardens don’t make sense:
If watering is a problem, don’t do raised beds. You’ll need to water a lot more, and oftentimes, depending on what you fill it with, the beds won’t saturate and distribute water properly. Filling a bed with straight-up compost may seem like a good idea, and will probably be fine given a few years for the soil microbes to incorporate it, but it’s more of a substance than a functioning soil food web.
If you don’t have money to burn on lumber or other border material, let alone yards and yards of topsoil and/or compost to fill it, don’t do raised beds. Most untreated lumber (which is what you want, if you’re doing food production) only lasts about 3 years anyway, and then you’ll have to replace it.
If you plan on growing the main annual vegetable crops, like tomatoes, peppers, squash, et cetera, don’t put them in raised beds. If you can’t turn the soil or rotate plantings from year to year, you’re likely to get more disease and pests that like to hide out in raised beds.
If you don’t own the growing space or have guaranteed long-term access, don’t put in raised beds just to turn around and either have to dismantle it when you leave or cause an issue for the next person to occupy that space if they don’t want to pick up where you left off.
If you only have access to bagged soil, you may create a brick of impenetrable material by piling it all up in one place. Bagged topsoil and compost is cut off from oxygen, meaning the beneficial bacteria and microbes you want won’t be in there. Also, regulations are so lax on what that stuff is made from that you really can’t trust it. Once it’s there, it’s there, and it may be hard to un-do it or work around it to actually increase soil health.
So, if any of these apply to you, you’ll be wondering what to do instead. Don’t worry, I got you.
Instead of building a raised garden,
Establish a compost pile. This will capture the fertility you’re already producing, and feed the microbes at your site. You will need it anyway when your garden explodes in growth.
Break up compacted soil and turf. Grass roots are perennial, and damn-near bullet proof. Meaning that, unless you physically remove them, they will be there the minute you turn your back to pop right back up and outgrow whatever you plant. Plus, roots need oxygen, so if your soil is compacted you will need to do something about that to expedite the regeneration process. You can choose to till it, dig it, whatever you want to do, but an ounce of disturbance in the beginning is worth a pound of weeding later.
Take a soil test. These cost around $20 from your local extension office. At the very least, test for common contaminants like lead. Ideally, get a detailed report on the nutrient levels as well. I could write a whole other post about contamination and soil testing, but for now, just be aware that this should be done once a year and at the same time of year. We do it for our organic certifications, but it also helps us improve soil and target remedies where needed. It’s the difference between trying to break a pinata with a blind fold vs not being blindfolded.
Conduct site analysis and assessment. I will expand upon this in our upcoming workshop, but the soil test is just the beginning. Also note what growing zone you’re in, the directional orientation of the growing space, how much light it gets, hose access, et cetera. Place your beds very intentionally to maximize plant health and your ease of access.
If you’re cleared against lead or other contamination, try building a sheet mulch bed on top of the area you’ve removed grass. This can be done for free or cheap, using repurposed materials like cardboard (non-shiny, tape and staples removed) as a weed barrier, then a layer of compost, then a layer of leaves or straw, and keep going. Alternating layers of carbon and nitrogen-rich mulch materials. This is also aptly named “Lasagna gardening”. In doing so, you increase the organic matter in the soil by feeding and housing the microbes right where you want them. Think of it as a worm buffet. This can be repeated every fall for ease of planting in the spring.
Don’t be afraid to hoe. I think a lot of people choose a raised bed because it seems like it will be easier or less work to control weeds if it’s not on the same level of the ground. When it’s not, people get disillusioned. Use your hand tools, like a hoe or hand hoe, and just gently rake it over the surface when weeds are TINY, like before there’s anything to hand-weed. It’s like sweeping the kitchen floor. A little every few days goes a long way.
And of course, there are exceptions where raised beds make sense.
If your site frequently floods (like our river bottom farm!), it does make sense to have raised beds. Even so, the beds are only ever 3-4 inches above the soil level.
If you have specific mobility/accessibility needs, like a children’s garden where they don’t know how to not step in the bed without clear delineation, that makes sense. If you are disabled, in a wheelchair, or otherwise need the garden to be above a certain height to reach it, that also makes sense. And I have ideas about how to make that work better than most basic set-ups out there. Perhaps a future post!
If you’re growing plants that need extremely good drainage and are perennials, like rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, and others. These are difficult in our muggy, wet Wisconsin summers, and they will generally need to be raised up to increase airflow and drainage and avoid root rot.
If you are committed to a raised bed, I suggest sourcing round logs to use as your border instead of lumber. They’re free, often able to be sourced in neighborhoods where tree work is being done around powerlines. They last longer than cut lumber. And you may get some cool mushrooms out of them (turkey tail, pheasant back, oysters). I’ve even used spent inoculated logs in my beds and gotten some shiitakes out of them.
In closing, I hope you all know I’m rooting for you. I’m no guru, I don’t have all the answers. But if anything I can offer helps someone not just avoid garden burn out, but achieve garden equilibrium, garden bounty, and yes, garden JOY - then that’s what I’m here for.
If you are in need of some more help, including a site visit, planning, and base map of your site (in the Milwaukee area), reach out to me directly for consultation. I’ve done this before for friends and community members, but it’s a new offering that I’m opening up. See our site for more info on that.
Cheers to spring!
<3Roxoxoxo
I was going to say, I’m in Colorado and the raised beds are the hardest part of gardening. They dry out way too fast, distribute water from the surface of the soil directly out of the beds from the bottom. But at the same time, composting is ridiculously hard too. My first couple of years worth of trying to compost resulted in a pile of mummified kitchen scraps. We’re talking solid, rock hard oranges and banana peel leather, nothing broke down even with a soaker hose embedded in the pile with an automatic hose timer set up to eliminate human error. I’ve been composting my entire life, but this is hard. I’m about to dig a hole and then try composting directly in the hole to try to prevent the water from evaporating so fast. 😅 but I have learned that in ground is best, heavy mulching to allow composting in the beds is best and cover crops break up the compacted clay soil faster than I could do it. I don’t weed, I just plant so densely that weeds don’t stand a chance. Bind weed taking over an area? Plant mint to drown out the bind weed so at least you’re harvesting as you weed lol.