from the forum: ideas for raised beds

Collaborative post

The growing season might be in full swing, but there are still ways to upgrade your garden game. From keeping out unwanted pests (or pets) to building your own customized trellising and irrigation—it’s time to make your beds work smarter, not harder. We’ve got five ways to customize your planters this summer that will not only make things look fantastic, but will take your growing capabilities to the next level. Whether you choose to tackle them all or just add one to your list of weekend to-dos, I promise it will be a noticeable refresh with rewarding results. 

Several companies manufacturers produce raised beds kits for gardens. Marmax products make their raised beds from recycled  High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) and donated this set to the library and learning centre at RHS Harlow Carr when it was new. Hard wearing, long lasting and doing its bit for recycling this use of plastic in the garden is to be admired.

Raised beds are a common way to grow edible and floral plants when either space is limited, bending down to the surface of the native soil is a challenge, when the present soil is not healthy/ compacted or non-existent (ex. concrete), or used for simply aesthetic purposes (window boxes). For more information, see HGIC 1257, Raised Beds

READER TERRYK HAS ME STUMPED THIS WEEK with the Urgent Garden Question forum question she posed: whether a doublefile viburnum or a Kousa dogwood rated being granted the limited garden space available.

(first published in 1989; proof positive how long I have been at this garden writing thing, friends)LIKE A GRADUATING SENIOR in that pointless last week of school, I have lost all ability to concentrate. I hadn’t been sure, until I sat down to write this, exactly what was on my mind, but it is full, so very annoyingly full that I awaken every morning when it is still dark to the tape playing in my head. It is a droning, relentless list, with lots of static punctuating entry after entry of musts, to-do’s, and did-I-remember-to’s.Probably it is partly the disease of gardening that does this to a person come June. At this time of year i

I LOVE THE FORUM POSTS THAT START with “somebody ate my…” (Actually, I hate these stories, but feel better knowing that I am not alone in the Case of the Disappearing Crop.) This week in the Urgent Garden Question Forum, there was one I really loved: from member NYGardeningGal who titled her question,“Somebody Ate My Plant From Underneath the Ground?” Oh, dear.

I have grown a lot of viburnums over the years, and have pruned them at various times of year for one reason or another. Usually viburnums need relatively little pruning, assuming you planted the right cultivar in the right-sized space (for example, not ‘Mariesii’ among the doublefiles, shown, but ‘Watanabei’ if you only had a smallish area). Even the lightest form of pruning, the removal of spent flowers called deadheading, isn’t needed with most viburnums, since what you want is fruit after the flowers (unlike all that deadheading with lilacs, for instance, to prevent messiness).POOR PLANNING TO BLAMEMost of the pruning I’ve had to do on viburnums was because I didn’t leave enough room for the plant to reach its eventual size, and poor planning (meaning my impatience to have a filled-in garden) caught up with me in time. I have cut several viburnums to the ground or the

IT’S A QUESTION I DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR, but maybe you can help: What’s the best way to keep track of gardening records—a format or tactic that can grow with the garden? Is it index cards; spreadsheets on the computer; a series of actual journals, such as the popular moleskine notebooks? Forum member KK asked the other day, and maybe you have the secret to record-keeping success.

WHAT FLOWERS DO YOU PLANT in the vegetable garden to encourage good pollination of your food crops? That was the great question raised the other day in the Urgent Garden Question Forum by member NanZ.

I’m a believer that each raised bed, which I like made from 2-by-10’s, must be a level entity unto itself, but that all the beds within a plot don’t need to match in terms of how much they extend out of the ground. To make them match on my crazy terrain, you’d have to build the downhill-side walls of the lowest ones several times as high as the uphill sides of the highest ones (if you can even decode that sentence). Then you’d have to bring in about 10 truckloads of soil and shovel for a year to fill them.Like I said, it’s easier to explain in photos, but first one more thought: Strive to have your pathways between beds, which should be just wide enough for a wheelbarrow, end up on the level, too. Nothing worse than uneven footing while working, or having a barrow-load of so

FORUM MEMBER ANN HAD a good question this week: Ever eaten pea tendrils or flowers or any of the bits other than the peas themselves? Well, yes I have, I replied, offering the best variety to grow for this gourmet salad ingredient or garnish, and I wonder what you think? Do tell. Or if you have nothing to report on that score, what about this: Have you lost seedlings you started to the (dreaded fungal disease called) damping off? Let us know (or just hear our horror stories).