If you are young, fit, and full of energy, then bending over or kneeling down to tend your garden may not be an issue. But if you are prone to back strain, or if you have any mobility issues, then a taller raised bed will make gardening easier.
Photo by Filip Urban on Unsplash. Container gardening in elevated planters is another option for gardeners with limited mobility.
These gardens can be tended while sitting in a wheelchair. However, the same principles apply in container gardens with respect to soil depth requirements, top-dressing amendments such as compost, fertilizer, and mulch. And taller plants grown in container gardens usually require staking or tying to trellis.
For more information, read our article about Wheelchair Gardening Tips. The taller you build your raised bed, the more volume it will hold. As the soil is watered it becomes heavier and this exerts pressure, which may cause your bed to bow outward in mid-span, near the top.
Manufacturers of raised beds often supply these supports, but if you are building your own beds, then you may want to include this feature.
The cross-support can be made using wood, composite plastic or aluminum. It is a simple job, and the aluminum stock is available at most hardware stores. Cedar raised beds come in six height options, from 5.
Composite beds come in four height options, from 5. This is because most root growth in vegetable gardens occurs in this relatively shallow depth. Nutrients such as compost and fertilizers are added to the bed from above and lightly tilled in.
Taproots will travel deeper into the soil if nutrients and water are available, and this also brings more trace minerals to the plant. Larger vegetable plants will send down deeper roots.
When plants are able to send their roots deeper, they are less likely to fall over in windy conditions or if the ground becomes too wet. Large-leafed, shallow-rooted plants such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower will still require staking to ensure they stay upright as they grow to maturity.
Knowing the average root depth for your garden vegetables will help you decide where to plant each crop and how deeply to prepare your soil. When preparing a garden bed for planting, it is helpful to know the root depth of vegetable crops since this has a bearing on where you may decide to plant certain crops and how deeply the soil is prepared.
For example, in our garden we may plant shallow rooted crops like lettuce in beds where the subsoil has more clay and does not drain well. The deeper clay does not affect the shallow roots, and they benefit from the added moisture. Plants with deeper roots, such as tomatoes, would not do well in this soil depth.
Some raised beds are set on cement patios or on gravel surfaces , which prevent roots from going deeper than the height of bed sides. In these cases, it is especially helpful to know the soil depth requirements of different vegetable crops.
Gardeners can compensate by building the raised beds higher to allow for more root space. Then you can print out your plan and the tool reminds you of your seeding and harvesting dates for every vegetable! Photo: Almanac Garden Planner. Try it free for 7 days. Any questions or advice about starting your garden? Check out some of the comments below. Many of your questions may have been answered already by our Almanac community or you are welcome to add your own comment.
Happy gardening! I'm new in gardening but I was curious that how to do gardening but now after reading this beginner guide now i ready for gardening thanks for all this information. The garden planner is lovely, but i'm hoping that you'll have an update to the 'in ground dates' feature.
Right now I can only select in-ground dates of complete months. I would like to plan for succession planting and dates other than the first of the month e. Is this coming in the future? Hi Catherine! I absolutely loved this article on gardening. I love the art of gardening coz' it brings me so much peace. And it is wonderful that you share your precious wisdom with us. Thank you so much for the insightful article :. Thank you for the blog. The blog is informative, I was planning for a long time to plant vegetables in my backyard but wondering how to start.
Thank you for the wonderful information on this site! My husband and I have been trying to start our first vegetable and herb and some fruit garden this year. Your informations are very helpful to us. I was looking at some figures earlier this year of daily hours of sunshine in the UK. In our main growing months, April, May, June, July, August, we got an average of just about 6 hours a day. The weather stations recording these figures would be on the top of tall buildings or in wide open spaces and get every minute of available sunshine every day.
Most home gardeners will have shadow to contend with as the sun moves behind buildings, trees and over the hill. I don't think we need 6 hours of sunshine each day to grow vegetables which is just as well because I don't think we get anything like that. One of our editors is from England. The number of sunlight hours by crop can vary but fruiting vegetables tomatoes, peppers, aubergine, cucumbers, squash, etc do indeed require 8 hours. However, root vegetables can deal with six hours of sunlight per day and leafy cool-weather green vegetables can operate on 4 hours a day and partial sun.
For a beginner, we advice 8 hours as a general rule as this allows all popular crops such as tomatoes to thrive. I thank you for a thoroughly enjoyable and succinct read.
A nice captivating intro. Well thought out and it's evident that you're well experienced. This is important for the whole world as everyone's lives change with Covid I can understand the comment by Linda from Germany as many city dwelling folk around the planet live in high-rise apartments. There are definitely resources for that but for me, as i read through your article, many memories of my Dads' garden in my childhood showed up.
I remembered the feel of soil under my toes and in my small hands, the smell of top-soil mixing with water and different vegetable leaves. Radishes can be harvested in as little as 24 days after planting, and can be inter-planted with slower-growing vegetables. You can plant radishes as soon as you can work the soil in the spring. Sow each seed 2 inches apart or more, or thin them to this spacing after they sprout.
Cover the seeds with about half an inch of compost or soil. Mix radish seeds with carrot seeds before you sow, especially if your soil tends to develop a tough crust. The quick-to-sprout radishes will push up through the soil, breaking it up for the later-sprouting carrots. As you harvest the radishes, the carrots will fill in the row. Not all carrots are orange; varieties range in color from purple to white, and some are resistant to diseases and pests. Many beginners find their carrots are short and deformed.
Mix in some sand and really loosen it up. Be bold! Thin those seedlings if you want carrots to form properly. If possible, plant cucumbers in the sun next to a fence. The fence will serve as support for climbing and act as a shelter. Or plant them near corn. The corn will trap the heat that cucumbers crave and also serve as a windbreak. Like it or not, super-nutritious kale is very hardy and can grow in a wide range of temperatures.
It can be harvested at many different stages, and the buds and flowers are edible, too! Mustards and collards are closely related to kale and are also easy to grow. Set out plants any time, from early spring to early summer and kale will grow until it gets too hot.
Plant again the fall, especially if you live in the southern United States. Interplanting is a growing method that will allow you to fit more vegetable plants in a single planting bed.
It is a way to increase your crop yield. Interplanting is also called intercropping. Interplanting is often used in intensive vegetable gardening where an effort is made to use all available space in the growing area—the counter point to single row planting which requires the most cropping space since the space between rows goes unplanted.
In intensive gardening you can space plants individually equidistance apart or in wide rows—several plants across a row to as much as 4 feet wide. There are several ways to interplant your crops. You can grow fast-maturing plants, such as radishes, between slower growing ones, say chard. The radishes will be ready for harvest before the chard begins to mature and requires more space to spread out. This way of interplanting borders on succession cropping—bringing one crop to harvest after another keeping the planting bed productive all season.
You can also interplant crops with different growing habits, tall crops near short ones, or deep-rooted with shallow-rooted. Crops interplanted by growing habit can be set equidistant according to their size height and breadth or root depth at maturity; or they can be planted in their own alternate rows in a wide bed. Interplanting requires planning.
You need to know the days to maturity for each crop and its height and breadth at maturity or its root depth at maturity. Do some planning on paper once you have decided on the crops you will be growing this season. Your email address will not be published. Post Comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.
0コメント