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GROW GOOD |<br />
BY NAN STERMAN<br />
Waterwise Gardening<br />
Starting a Raised Bed Garden<br />
<strong>Winter</strong> is the perfect time to prepare for a spring vegetable<br />
garden, especially if you are just beginning. There’s much<br />
more to growing vegetables than plopping seedlings into the<br />
ground. In our hot climate, where soils have very little organic<br />
matter and no summer rainfall, the best way to grow veggies is to<br />
plant them in raised beds.<br />
What’s a raised bed? The most simple and time-proven raised<br />
beds are bottomless wood boxes that sit on the ground. Each is<br />
filled with a soil mixture customized for vegetables. Since vegetables<br />
tend to be “thirsty” plants, each bed gets plumbed with<br />
a dedicated irrigation system on its own valve, separate from the<br />
rest of the garden.<br />
Planting in raised beds is different too. The plants can be<br />
grown closer together, which means more vegetables in less space.<br />
There are endless variations of raised beds, but here are the basics.<br />
The best place for raised beds<br />
Choose a spot in full sun, near your kitchen, with good access<br />
to water. Set beds atop bare soil, NOT on top of grass, landscape<br />
cloth, weed cloth, concrete, gravel, or asphalt.<br />
The best materials for raised beds<br />
I am a fan of building raised beds with untreated wood, preferably<br />
redwood.<br />
Line the bottoms with hardware cloth (not chicken wire,<br />
which breaks down sooner). Cut hardware cloth a little wider<br />
and longer than the bed, and push it down into the bed from<br />
above so the hardware cloth curves up the sides. This helps keep<br />
gophers, voles, and other critters from burrowing in through<br />
the seams.<br />
STELLA DE SMIT ON UPSPLASH<br />
18 ediblesandiego.com
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