Creating a Raised Bed For Herbs
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When you start out to form an herb garden, you can simply tuck in herbs here and there between your other landscaping plants. However, if you want a dedicated herb garden, or you want to plant a selection of productive plants including herbs, plants and cutting flowers, I advise going with a raised bed.
Plants like herbs require good water drainage, I’m sure you know how frustrating it is to have a yard that just won’t cooperate and is to wet or too dry. Some plants can handle the excess water that comes about from being in an area that doesn’t drain correctly. In fact, it might just lead them to bloom more sumptuously. However, most herbs don’t cope as well with these conditions. You should always find out about the drainage required for each plant you purchase, and make sure that it won’t fight with any of the areas you are considering planting it in. If you have sandy soil with too much drainage, raised beds could be a great solution for you, too. Putting enriched soil and compost with plenty of organic matter in the bed will make a squishy soil that keeps moisture long enough for your plants’ roots to soak up it.
In order to test how much water your appointed patch of soil will retain, dig a hole roughly 10 inches deep. Fill it with water, and come back in a day when all the water had vanished. Fill it back up again. If the 2nd hole full of water isn’t gone in 10 hours, your soil has a low saturation point. This suggests that when water soaks into it, it will stick around for ages before diminishing. This is unsatisfactory for almost any plant, and you are going to do something to fix it if you’d like your plants to survive.
The common methodology for improving drainage in your garden is to make a raised bed. This involves creating a border for a little bed, and adding enough soil and compost to it to raise it above the remainder of the yard by at least five inches. You will be amazed at how much your water drainage will be improved by this tiny alteration. If you’re planning to build a raised bed, your possible area is either on grass or on mud. For each of these scenarios, you should build it a little differently.
If you would like to start a raised garden in a non grassy area, you won’t have much difficulty. Just find some variety of border to retain the dirt you’ll be adding. I have revealed that there is nothing that works quite as well as a few 2 by fours. After you have made the wall, you must put in the correct amount soil and steer manure. Depending on how long you intend to wait before planting, you will wish to adjust the proportion to make allowance for any disintegrating that may occur.
If you’re making an attempt to install a raised bed where sod already exists, you’ll have a slightly harder time. You will need to chop the sod round the perimeter of the garden, and flip it over. This may sound straightforward, but you’ll need something with a very sharp edge to cut the edges of the sod and get under it. When you have turned it all the wrong way up, it’s best to add a layer of straw to deter the grass from growing back up. After the layer of straw, simply add all the soil and steer dung a ordinary garden would need.
Planting your herbs in the new bed should not pose much difficulty. It is pretty much the same process as your usual planting session. Just be sure that the roots don’t extent too far into the original ground level. The whole point of creating the raised bed is to keep the roots out of the soil which saturates easily. Having long roots that extend that’s not ideal. Your raised beds should be 8-12′ or higher to provide enough height to maximize your herbs’ rooting success.
Once you have plants in your new bed, you’ll notice a nearly immediate improvement. The added soil facilitates better root development. At the same time, evaporation is forestalled and decomposition is deterred. All of these things added together makes for a perfect environment for just about any plant to grow in. So do not be threatened by the very idea of adjusting the very topography of your yard. It is a straightforward process as I am sure you’ve realized, and the long-term results are worth each bit of work.
Raised beds are definitely a wonderful place to grow herbs.
Here are a few last tips on raised beds for herbs:
- Make your beds no wider than 4′ across or it will be tough to reach to the center for weeding and harvesting.
- Plant annual and perennial herbs in different parts of the bed so you can take out the annuals easily and till/compost the soil for next year’s planting in the autumn.
- Make your raised beds about 12′ tall.
You will find that your herbs do very well in raised beds, and many other plants benefit from being planted near them. Herbs can also attract bumble bees and other beneficial insects if you avoid using pest sprays on them.
Raised beds can be as small as you like – 4′ by 4′ is probably a good “small box” size. But if you don’t have room for a raised bed in a sunny part of your yard, consider growing herbs in pots!
Related posts:
- Raised Bed Gardening-Some Advantages
- Indoor Gardening – Growing Herbs in Pots
- Choosing Herbs For Growing? Know Their Requirements!
- Growing Herbs in Pots
- Tips on How to Grow an Herb Garden
