Raised Garden Beds Mistakes

Hold on, WordPress just let me know it’s been 3 years since I registered this blog.  Wow.

Thanks to everyone who follow along with me on my blogging journey.

Ok – It’s still spring and now that things are growing it’s just maintenance and preparing for the harvest at this point.  Might be my last Gardening post for a bit. Which makes me excited to share about our home coming up.

Raised Garden Beds Mistakes

I follow a local gardening group and seeing lots of people in our area making raised beds.  I see people across Canada that I follow getting into theirs.  So I thought it would be a good time to share my experience.

Spring 2019

We built our raised garden beds in 2019.  I had great success with them the first year and this year I’m taking a different approach.

Gardening is lots of growing and learning your knowledge. Mistakes happen and that’s how we learn.

Mistake 1: Not preparing the ground

Here’s what we started with before we built the Raised Beds. I was fighting so many weeds.  It was exhausting.

I remember my husband saying our Garden was too big.  It’s half the size of my mom’s garden. I didn’t feel it was big enough.  I should have spent time knowing where the major weed infestation was to deal with the ground before building.

Mistake 2: Not Preparing the BOTTOM of the Raised Garden Beds

We built these in the end of March in 2019.  We made sure the Lawn Mower could go in between for mowing. We kinda guessed, never researched the size they should be.

Again, we didn’t prepare the base or the bottom of the boxes. I’m fighting WEEDS, and left over invasive plants that aggressively come up. Cardboard or landscape cloth would have been a huge help here.

3: Not RESEARCHING the basics of Raised Garden Beds

We got a great garden mix from a local garden center and filled the boxes.  They look so clean in this picture. However, looking back on it, I wish I did what we learned the hard way with other projects and did our research.

Spring 2020

We had a decent Harvest last year.  I shared about that in this blog post.

Mistake 4: Planning ahead for planting seeds and plants

I forget to split my Rhubarb this year.  It’s overtaking this first raised garden bed, even since I shot these pictures.  Plus I realized last year that it was TOO BIG for the boxes.

There’s a gardening thing to do with companion gardening. Umm, yah, didn’t take that into consideration. My second box I’m trying to stagger plant.  My attempt to start seeds early this year went sideways.

Mistake 5: Labeling your plants

Carrie, really?  This is like Gardening 101 here.  I planted 3 Varieties of garlic…and didn’t label them. Oops. I kept the packages and at least still know the names.

I told myself I would remember….yah no.  I was in a rush and thought I was late getting the bulbs in the ground in the fall. Turns out I was just fine and should have taken the extra few minutes to make labels.

Mistake 6: Critter protection

Critters as in Animals.

I woke up one morning, walked out on the deck to see a perfect, cat poop mound in this raised garden bed. I took care of the mess and pealed some oranges and put them in the box.

THEN, our puppy thought it was fun to dig in this box, hence the make shift roll of fencing.  I need to think about a plan to deal with this box here soon. Any ideas would be appreciated?

Harvest 2020

I’m already loving running to the Raised Garden beds and getting fresh chives, parsley and rhubarb.  Already made Rhubarb Compote, it was amazing with mothers day breakfast on waffles and homemade bread the other day.

Just a note to add – I’m out here daily dealing with weeds.  It’s a gardeners job to keep on top of it.  I get that.  However bindweed from the hedge and the corner of the yard is INTENSE. Including the buttercups that cover between the beds and the fence line.

I took these photos a few weeks back.  Now…it’s everywhere.  I’m glad I took pictures before the weeds took over.

Happy Planting!

Don’t make these mistakes like we did. I hope this post is helpful to know what can happen.

I LOVE the Raised Garden beds, the difference in my gardening has been amazing.

If we built more to add to this side of the yard we will not make the same mistakes again.