1. You can have a home garden even if you have poor soil in your landscape. With raised bed gardens, you can fill up your bed with premium garden soil and compost and be done with it. No sweat-inducing, back-breaking, rockbar-needing digging involved! Why spend hours amending poor soil when you can start with the good stuff?

2. You can grow a garden even if you don’t have a lot of space. Raised bed gardens can be built to fit the space you have. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They can be tucked into a corner, or lined along a deck; and you can pack a lot into a small space when you combine the square foot garden method along with your raised bed garden. Do not let the thought of a lack of space in your landscape prevent you from gardening if it’s a desire you have. 

3. Raised bed gardens allow for the proper depth recommended for growing vegetables or other plants. Veggies need a minimum of about 12”-15” depth to grow in (deeper if you can). And most plants benefit from deep soil to stretch out in and spread their roots. It’s easier to build your soil up in raised bed gardens then it is to dig way down through tough, limestone-filled soil in your landscape. The roots of your plants will also have better drainage and receive better oxygen in raised bed gardens. When there are prolonged periods of wetness (yes, this can happen even in San Antonio), you won’t have to worry so much about your plants getting waterlogged and developing root rot. It’s much easier to add water to soil then to try to extract it.

4. Raised bed gardens can lessen the distance you have to bend to do your garden tasks. I’m pretty sure every gardener out there has had a moment when they’ve risen from the ground after weeding a garden and their back just said, Nope!”Wouldn’t it be awesome if the fear of tht happening was no longer in your mind? Some raised garden beds are built waist high requiring no bending at all. Now that’s a back saver!

5. You won’t have to worry as much about pets digging up your prized, heirloom vegetables. The higher borders around your raised bed gardens help keep Fido from prancing around in your precious garden soil and trampling all your precious plants. Dirt is meant to be dug and pets all to eagerly oblige. Build up so that you can reduce the frequency and amount of carnage left over from a day of your pet playing in the yard.

Want to know how to build your own raised bed gardens and get some expert tips for growing plants and vegetables in them successfully? Well, you are in luck. On August 31^st, 10AM, at our Thousand Oaks location, we will be hosting Uprooted Gardens, a company that builds and maintains raised garden beds in the San Antonio area. Let these experts share their knowledge and advice for how to get started with raised bed gardens, prepping your raised bed soil, planting techniques, and much more. Hope to see you there!