How To Build Raised Beds For Your Gardening Season
Ready, set … it’s almost time to start that gardening season!
It’s that time of year again–that’s right, gardening season! Boy oh boy, if you’re gardening gurus like us, you can hardly wait. Have you started planning yet?
The months of February, March, and April should be dedicated to developing this year’s gardening plan. From figuring out what you’re going to plant this year and drawing up your garden map to building those raised garden beds and prepping your existing gardening areas, it’s time to start!
Having a plan and prepping for the year ahead helps you and your garden … well, be prepared! And when you’re prepared now, you can get started with all things planting as soon as good ol’ Mother Nature says it’s time to do so.
If you’re new to raised bed gardening, we’re going to let you in on our raised bed know-how and tell you which products and techniques are going to be best for your growing season. So let’s get to it!
Building Your Own Raised Garden Beds
There are all sorts of good-for-your-plants, good-for-your-yard, good-for-your-garden benefits to gardening in raised beds. Planting your garden goodies in raised beds allows for …
Better Water Drainage … Well-built raised garden beds allow for water to drain more efficiently than planting in the ground.
A Longer Growing Season … Raised beds warm up more quickly than the natural ground does, meaning possible earlier planting in the spring and healthier plants all season long!
Material Conservation … When gardening and maintaining specific areas rather than an entire, spread-out area in the ground, you can conserve materials such as mulch, water, and soil amendments.
Easy, Beautifully Maintained Gardening Spaces … There’s no question that raised beds are beautiful, but aside from the aesthetic benefit, they also minimize weeds (and weed maintenance), unnecessary trampling or walking over gardening areas, and their smaller space is easier for any level gardener to manage.
If you don’t have any existing raised beds in your garden, you’re in luck … we’re the raised bed building experts! You can build new raised beds in a variety of ways, ways that we’ll categorize into recycled builds and brand new ones.
Building Raised Garden Beds From Recycled Materials
You sure can build your raised garden beds from recycled materials found around your yard, your home, your world. We love the recycled beds option because, you know, RECYCLING IS COOL! Using materials that you already have and transforming them into something new–something used to grow your very own garden–now that’s some recycling we’re all about!
There are many different techniques for this, here are some of our favorites.
Recycle Raised Beds From Hay Bales
Got some extra hay bales hanging around, or have a farming neighbor that has plenty on hand? Put them to use!
Make the garden bed shape (however your yard sees fit) using hay bales. Then fill them up with soil and plant! The hay bale material is great for wonderful water drainage and a recycled, green look.
Water Trough Raised Garden Beds
Water troughs turned growing troughs … how cool! These unique and crazy cool recycled garden beds make for wonderful spots of garden goodness.
Make sure the trough drains are open to allow for excess water to drain. Then, fill those guys up with soil and plant your plants, your seeds, your garden!
Recycled Everything Raised Garden Beds
Together, Eddy House, Farmily Organic Farms, Full Circle Compost, Tito lawn & Landscaping, Ewing Irrigation & Landscape Supply, and Katie Grace Foundation built these one-of-a-kind recycled garden beds at the Men’s Transitional House. Using recycled materials and filling them up with Full Circle’s KICK, this project is going great for teaching the youth who live on-site about growing their own vegetables.
Building Raised Garden Beds From New Lumber & Materials
If you don’t have those old materials laying around behind your shed like many yard- and gardening-gurus do, there are many raised garden bed options for you too! Going out and buying necessary materials to build and garden this season is great, and there are many different options here as well. Here are a few of our favorite Full Circle customer gardens.
Mini Raised Garden Beds
These mini raised beds were built at a school for children to learn about gardening and get that hands-on experience growing their own plants and vegetables.
Mini sized and perfect for kids, and these beds were crafted from new lumber and filled up with Full Circle’s KICK.
Painted Raised Beds For Your Garden
Want to fancy-up your raised garden beds? Painting them can do just that! These white painted garden beds are beautiful, and there are tons of options when it comes to choosing how to decorate your raised beds.
If you’re feeling extra artsy and want to spend even more time in your garden (we don’t blame you), give them a special touch with painted designs, murals, and anything else you can think up.
Galvanized Metal Garden Beds
And how cool are these?! Galvanized raised garden beds sure do give the industrial feel to your backyard. Playing With Mud has a garden-tastic tutorial on how to build some fancy galvanized metal raised beds. Go check it out!
Fill Those Beds Up With KICK!
Now that you’ve got some raised beds built … now what? Fill ‘em up!
Full Circle Compost makes some of the greatest Tahoe Basin garden soil in the biz! KICK Garden Soil is our nutritious garden soil that is perfect for adding nutritious soil to your garden or for raised-bed gardening.
This mighty and nutritious garden soil is four topsoils, blended with our premium humus based compost, and a 50 lb (20 ingredient) all-natural mineral and nutrient package. That’s right, it’s …
- “Feel Good” Certified, so you and your plants can feel good.
- All-natural and enviro-friendly!
- A blend of choice topsoils and our BOOST Soil Amendment.
- Drought resistant … big time!
Just fill up your raised beds, plant, and water. KICK should have plenty of nutrition for your garden for at least a season.
BOOST, BOOST, BOOST!
If you’re ahead on the raised garden bed and KICK Garden Soil game, BOOST will be your best friend. In subsequent seasons, you just add BOOST Soil Amendment to replenish the KICK minerals and nutrients.
BOOST is our premium humus based compost with a 100 lb (20 ingredient) mineral and nutrient package specific to Nevada soils. You just spread BOOST at 1/4″ on everything, rake it out, water it in. You can use BOOST on landscapes, lawns, flowers, trees, shrubs, and garden beds. You really can BOOST your everything!
Build Raised Beds With The Full Circle Crew
Are you ready to build those raised garden beds and get to growing? We are!
Share your raised garden bed pictures, gardens, and lush produce to the folks here at Full Circle Compost. We’d love to feature some of our favorite garden beds on our Full Circle pages, so go ahead and share them with us!
Send over your pictures to info@fullcirclecompost.com, tag us on Instagram and Facebook, or use the hashtag #RaisedBedsWithFullCircle. Happy gardening!
