In this video I will share seven common raised bed garden mistakes. Gardening in raised beds is easier because you have control over more variable and can grow more in less space, unless you make these mistakes. So watch this video and avoid all 7 of these raised bed gardening mistakes.
MENTIONED PRODUCTS
Grassroots Fabric Pots & Raised Beds
https://www.grassrootsfabricpots.com Use Discount Code: NEXTLEVEL10
MENTIONED/RELATED VIDEO
Building raised beds (like at old house): https://youtu.be/8Z48Ni8wgm0
Build Simple Raised Beds (like in this video): https://youtu.be/EiR20Dqad6U
Winterizing Raised Beds:
DIGITAL TABLE OF CONTENTS
00:37 – How long should a raised bed be
01:49 – How deep should a raised garden bed be
04:02 – Materials to use for raised beds
06:15 – What do you fill raised beds with
08:39 – Do you need to refresh raised bed garden soil
09:51 – Do you need to mulch raised garden beds
11:25 – How do you prepare raised beds for winter?
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Hey Guys, I’m Brian from Next Level Gardening
Welcome to our online community! A place to be educated, inspired and hopefully entertained at the same time! A place where you can learn to grow your own food and become a better organic gardener. At the same time, a place to grow the beauty around you and stretch that imagination (that sometimes lies dormant, deep inside) through gardening.
I’m so glad you’re here!
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welcome to my raised bed vegetable
garden I’ve grown vegetables for many
years almost strictly in raised beds and
at my last house it was basically out of
necessity because we didn’t have any sun
in any spot where we had open ground I
do have several videos on how to build
this type of raised bed and this type of
raised bed now while both of those
videos will tell you how to build raised
beds that’s not what this video is about
this video is before you’re setting up
your raised beds what to think about so
you don’t make mistakes that I have and
that other people have and you can get
off to a great start this year without
any mistakes the first mistake is making
your bed too long or too wide my
favorite width for a bed is 4T wide my
favorite length is 8 ft long a 4×8 bed
is great for almost everybody it’s not
too wide so from either side you can
reach into the center or if you’ve got
long arms like me you can reach almost
all the way over it’s also not too long
if you build a 20ft bed every time you
have to go around to the other side of
that bed you got to walk all the way
down all the way back another great
thing about a 4×8 raised bed is that it
saves money and waste you can get 8 foot
pieces of lumber at pretty much any
hardware store so 3 8ft pieces of lumber
will build your bed one of those pieces
you’ll cut in half or have someone at
the hardware store cut it in half for
you those are the two ends of the bed
and then the other two pieces are the
sides now this isn’t exactly beds but it
does have to do with the beds and that
is the space between them the paths now
mine are a little more than 2 feet wide
I just like to have them about the size
of me turning sideways kneeling in the
path so I don’t have to get into some
weird positions so when you’re planning
these things out literally sit down
between the beds and see how much size
you need the second mistake is to make
your bed too shallow now that could be
different for different people you want
to build your bed tall enough based on
your comfort level or what kind of
substrate is under the raised bed so if
you have a hard time bending over then
you might want to build your beds up
maybe 2 3 feet tall maybe more if you
have good soil underneath the bed or at
least not bad soil uh a 6in tall bed is
totally fine if you have concrete like I
used to have then you’re going to need
12 to 14 in depth in your raised bed
most vegetables want to send their Roots
down about a foot and so if you have a
6-in tall raised bed and then you have
soil underneath that that’s fine if you
don’t you need to give them that foot
above whatever that substrate is now
here we have a gopher problem and so
when I first built my beds I built them
6 in tall and I put hardware cloth
underneath to keep the Gophers out
totally does its job lasts for years I
recommend it to anyone who has a gopher
issue the problem I’ve had with these
6in deep beds with the Gopher wire
underneath them
is you can’t plant you know long carrots
or parsnips or anything like that they
have to be short ones which isn’t that
big of a deal the other problem I had
was trying to put in like uh a teepe
trellis for beans let’s say you only got
that far to pound them in and that’s not
really far enough the wind took them
over so in the three beds that I built
last year to expand the width of the
garden I actually doubled the height and
now it’s 12 in deep just two uh 2x sixes
on top of each other and what’s great
about these simple framed raised beds is
you can expand them or build them taller
whenever you want to in fact over the
next couple years I think I’m going to
take all of my beds and put another 2×6
on top of them to make them all 12 in
deep it’s really easy to do you just
stack the boards on top and put a 2×4 or
a 4×4 some piece of scrap wood in the
corner to screw into and maybe one more
on each side somewhere in the middle of
the bed just to keep them from shifting
keep them from bowing out just keep them
together the third mistake is to make
your bed out of the wrong material now
there’s not a lot of wrong material in
fact you don’t even need material you
can make your bed just piling up the
soil about 6 to 12 in tall and planting
directly into it you’re still going to
get the benefits of drainage and all
that good stuff but you don’t have to
spend money on any kind of material to
hold that in now I prefer the material
because I like a neat garden and if
you’re like me and you want edges I I
would say wood is the cheapest way to go
I use Douglas fur you can use Redwood or
Cedar those will be a little more
expensive in the beginning but they’ll
probably last a little bit longer what
you want to stay away from is compressed
or treated lumber uh that may not be so
good for your health now they’re not as
dangerous as they used to be when they
were actually treated with arsenic now
they’re treated with something called
copper ail it is not organic approved
whether it leeches into your plants or
not I don’t know I’d just rather be safe
than sorry and just replace mine in six
or seven years versus however long
you’ll get out of the treated stuff to
me it’s a good tradeoff these beds here
are made out of fabric the company that
made these is Grassroots I’ll put a link
below the great thing about fabric beds
is they root prune and that means as the
roots hit the edge of the bed they
detect the oxygen that’s coming through
that fabric and they actually split it’s
like pruning them when you prune or
pinch out a plant it causes more
branching same thing down below it
causes more Roots so instead of wrapping
themselves around you know you find a a
pot-bound plant they just split split
split and you get a nice healthy root
system so I love these fabric beds I
actually grew a whole bunch of sweet
potatoes in them last year it was a huge
harvest in just two 4×4 raised beds I
think I got like 86 lbs of sweet
potatoes out of those two beds and the
last choice is metal rais beds these are
great as well they come in lots of
different designs they come in a lot of
different heights and they’re going to
last a long time more than any of the
other choices of course they’re the most
expensive
option all right now it’s time to fill
the bed so the mistake there would be
filling it with the wrong growing medium
this is where most of the cost is going
to be in your raised bed therefore it’s
probably what most people skimp on but
it’s really the most important thing
we’re growing and raised beds to get all
the benefits one of which the main one
is good drainage and good soil that’s
not compacted you want a light fluffy
texture that you can just dig your hands
down into you’d never be able to do that
in the ground and so you never want to
use garden soil to fill your raised beds
with I know it’s tempting especially if
you got a lot of extra soil laying
around but it doesn’t work the same way
when you fill it with that it’s going to
compact even some of the best soil maybe
if you have the best LOM in the world it
might work but do you really want to
take that chance so clay soil of course
not that’s never going to work sandy
soil that would never work either you
would lose all the water it would just
drain right through so you’re going to
want to use a potting soil or a raised
bed mix there’s some great bulk options
if you have a mushroom farm near you you
know look it up a lot of times they give
their mushroom compost away for free you
just got to transport it and shovel it
but it’s free
so like I said the main cost of filling
a raised bed is the soil now if you’ve
got a 3ft tall raised bed that’s where
it can get real expensive but you only
have to worry about the top 12 in having
that good potting soil raised bed mix
compost the rest of it can be filled
with other types of organic material
organic meaning they will eventually
break down so you can start on the
bottom with some large uh tree branches
limbs go up with a layer of smaller
branches up with another layer of Twigs
then leaves get smaller as you go to the
top and over the years all of that will
break down and eventually you’ll have
good soil all the way throughout now
just be prepared with this method it
will sink a bit every year not a lot and
you’ll have to top it up which you have
to do anyway we’ll get to that but it
does make filling a raised bed a brand
new raised bed a lot cheaper one thing I
would warn you on is do not use grass
clippings to fill your raised bed unless
you want a lovely sewage smell every
time you water for at least 2 months ask
me how I know the fifth mistake I just
hinted at it uh is not refreshing the
soil you’re going to notice every year
no matter if you’ve got it filled with
branches and twigs and leaves or if it’s
all uh compost or potting soil every
year you are going to lose a little bit
and it could be from erosion settling
you know pulling out plants and the the
soil goes with the roots so every year
in spring or fall or both I do both I
add another inch or two of good compost
or potting soil or raised bed mix just
to the top I don’t mix it in it’s going
to do a few things it’s going to first
of all keep that root run as deep as it
needs to be second thing it’s going to
do is actually make a blanket over the
soil that was there the previous year
and that’s going to help bury some of
maybe the spores for bacteria diseases
things like that it just puts a nice
physical uh blanket between that and
your next crop it also just
reinvigorates the soil with new organic
matter so all those great beneficial
bacteria and bugs and worms can start to
pull that down break it down and get it
down into the soil the six mistake is
not mulching now mulching keeps the
weeds down it keeps the moist in the
soil for me in a dry climate it is
invaluable but not fighting weeds all
summer that’s pretty good too and I
water with drip irrigation and my my
mulch goes over that so none of that
moisture ever sees the light a day does
not evaporate from the Sun it goes
straight into the soil and stays there
if you move mulch away you can see that
the soil underneath is wet whereas right
next to it same bed no mulch the soil is
dry it’s going to save you money on your
water bill and if you water by hand it’s
going to save you a lot of time mulch is
also yet another blanket between the
soil and your plants and it’s organic so
it’s eventually going to break down and
be taken into the soil now make sure
when you plant and you have mulch you
move the mulch aside plant in the soil
and put the mulch back you never want to
uh bury mulch in the soil because that
will start to Rob nitrogen from the soil
as it breaks down so your plants have
enough nitrogen to get what they need if
you have a snail or slug issue I would
stay away from mulching with things like
straw or pine needles um mainly because
they get in there and they can hide I
had a horrible time I put straw down as
mulch and our wet season is our winter
so in the winter I put straw down as
mulch and I had never had that much of a
problem with snails and slugs they were
everywhere the seventh mistake is not
protecting your beds in in the winter
now a lot of gardeners skip this step
because it’s fall you’re tired you’re
burnt out from a long hot summer and you
just want to forget about it until
spring that’s a big mistake if you have
cold Icy Winters you need to protect the
soil if you just have rainy Winters you
need to protect from erosion there’s
lots of ways to do that mulching is one
of them a nice thick layer of mulch over
the winter does wonders I’ll put a link
below to a video I did a couple years
ago on how to winterize beds both in
cold climate Winters and mild climate
Winters but you can also grow cover
crops cover crops are just something
it’s a blanket of green over your beds
The Roots keep the soil intact and as
the plants die if they if they freeze
they will die they will be taken into
the soil like a green um green manure so
you’re holding your soil in place and
you’re actually reinvigorating it with a
cover crop if you live in a cold climate
you might want to use something like
winter ridee that can hand handle the
cold crimson clover is another one hairy
vetch a lot of people think of these
things as weeds and they can be if your
climate gets cold enough in the winter
to just kill it you don’t have to worry
about it but if it doesn’t and they
remain and they start to go to flour you
can have a problem with weeds but
there’s a real simple solution don’t let
them flour as soon as you see the flower
buds forming just mow them down leave
all those cuting right there on the
surface they’ll be taken into the soil
to reinvigorate it all right that was
seven raised bed mistakes now if you
want to learn how to make the raised
beds that I showed you like I have in my
garden click this video right here for a
simple stepbystep tutorial I’ll see you
next time
50 Comments
"You want a light, fluffy texture that you can just dig your hands down into. You'd never be able to do that in the ground." No raised beds here, and our soil has a lot of clay, but after gardening for 13 years, adding compost every year and mulching in the fall, we can dig almost a foot into the ground in our garden with our bare hands. We'll be digging up the soil to take to our next home where we plan to build raised beds! I didn't follow rule 7 for the first 10 years though, and since we started mulching in the fall gardening has gotten SO much easier!
Treated lumber has absolutely no impact on your plants. If treated lumber leeched its treatment into the environment in any significant amount, then it would cease to be functional as treated lumber. All scientific studies have shown that there is no measurable chemical leeching, even in old style arsenic treated lumber.
can i use material from the forest behind me, its mixed evergreen, birch forest, if so how much approx
Thankyou ❤
Such great advice and inspirational too!
Had to repair driveway retaining wall as Redgum sleepers had grub dmg. Used treated 2" sleepers in front of redgum but put Corflute plastic barrier in between. This separates soil from sleepers treatment & should sleepers need replacing the soil remains intact rather than collapsing as sleepers removed.
Great Tips Brian, What do you think about Pine shavings for mulch or compost? I use it on my chicken house. I haven't seen anyone using Pine shavings on their garden and was wondering why.
Highlights:
0:21 🌱 Mistake 1: Making the bed too long or too wide
1:24 🌱 Mistake 2: Making the bed too shallow
2:56 🌱 Mistake 3: Choosing the wrong material for the bed
4:23 🌱 Mistake 4: Filling the bed with the wrong growing medium
5:44 🌱 Mistake 5: Not refreshing the soil annually
6:51 🌱 Mistake 6: Not mulching the bed
8:01 🌱 Mistake 7: Not protecting the beds in the winter
Key Insights
💡 The ideal dimensions for a raised bed are 4 ft wide and 8 ft long, allowing easy access to the center and saving money on lumber.
💡 The height of the bed should be based on personal preference and the type of substrate underneath, with taller beds recommended for those with difficulty bending over.
💡 When choosing materials for the bed, avoid compressed or treated lumber and opt for wood like Douglas fir, redwood, or cedar.
💡 Use a suitable potting soil or raised bed mix to ensure good drainage and avoid compacted soil, avoiding garden soil, clay soil, or sandy soil.
💡 Regularly adding compost or potting soil to the top of the bed helps maintain the depth and quality of the soil.
💡 Mulching not only helps suppress weeds but also conserves moisture, reduces evaporation, and provides a barrier between the soil and plants.
💡 Protecting the beds in the winter is crucial to prevent erosion and maintain soil integrity, which can be done through mulching or planting cover crops.
Do you recommend adding worms?
Don't be afraid to build the bed using composite material. Trex, Evergrain, and all the other major brands claim to have no toxic ingredients. They look great and last forever. The drawback is the cost but if you have leftover materials from your deck project you now have a matching garden! Thank you for sharing your experiences!
Living in Washington, it rains a lot. I went with a high quality metal raised bed the manufacturer claims will last 20 years. Hopefully it lasts at least close to that. Pressure treated wood won’t even last 5 years here in the wet dirt.
Thanks! 🙏🏼
Do your channel a favor and use units that 96% of the world population is using. Meters is even the official unit the US national institute of standards is using.
But overall, yes we can understand what you're telling. it just doesn't make sense to use these units any longer.
Here’s how to reduce snail and slug issue by 90% or more. Buy 2” copper tape and run a ring of that along the top outside edge of your bed. Then do a thorough search for any snails or slugs hiding inside your bed and remove them. The ones that try to get into the bed after that HATE copper and only the largest and most determined ones will cross over. You probably will have to replace your tape before the season is over if it is adhered to wood or some other surface that isn’t great for sticking it to.
I have gone outside at night and watched slugs and snails go up to the tape and as soon as they touch it they turn around or crawl along the edge looking for an opening. Don’t believe me? Put some tape down on a flat surface, creating a box around some slugs you find, and watch what they do. Most will avoid the tape.
Great video. I can relate to the comment about "feeling lazy in the fall". I often neglect my raised beds after summer, much to my chagrin….
We're lucky enough to live just a short walk from the local public wood processing facility, so we have all the free mulch we need. We don't actually use it for mulch, because it ends up in the soil and leeches nitrogen.
Rather, we use it as a base layer to provide good drainage and reduce the need for soil as our raised beds and some of our planters are well over a foot high.
Because it's relatively fine mulch it always turns into soil within a year, so we don't have to add new soil each year, just the base layer mulch, and the local earthworms absolutely love it and help that process along.
thank you very very much for your useful tips 🙂 the most important for me was the fact to not mix the new annual soil/potting soil with the old from the last year, to avoid spores, deseases or other bad things..this year i will only get rid of the weeds and then put the new soil on top 🙂
We just filled a new 12×3 foot , 18inch deep bed . The first 8 inches of fill was millings from the local lumber mill . It is basically mulch you get at Lowes but it is not bagged . You may want to check the price of mulch at Lowes and get the stuff without the dye . It is usually $2 a bag so 40 bags is very reasonable in price .
We then added P-15 Planting Media and a mixture of manure and mushroom soil we bought from a local Amish Plant Nursery .
iN What area do you live ? Are those Hibiscus flowers in the back ground ? It make a difference where you live, I live in a zone 5 Northeast US.
Anothe r bad asp[ect of using Grass clippings is that as they decompose they rob nitrogen from the soil.
My raised beds are made out of shipping pallets try to avoid the ones that are painted is there chemically treated but if you do a good thick plastic layer lining the inside will prevent any leaching
I'm broke so we use material we already have from other things. Reused materials are not only to save the planet 😂
I almost watched EVERY video about raised beds on youtube, and yet this video is THE MOST USEFUL of all! I learned a lot and cannot wait to build my raised bed garden😊
One thing I do need to buy is Mulch 😬
I was going to mulch with straw too but I also have lots of slugs. So what did you use instead?
Our government has no idea how our senior citizens survive! No one in the current administration is representing this country. Anyone who is not investing now is really missing a tremendous opportunity. Imagine investing $1,000 and potentially receiving $4,600, depending on market conditions.
Your method of building raised beds makes huge profits for Home Depot, Menards, and Lowes.
When you don't have big bucks like you have, recycle wood pallets that you can pick up for free. All wood based raised beds will eventually deteriorate because of outside weather, so garden smart, not flashy. Who cares besides yourself how the raised garden beds looks on the outside. The magic is what's growing in the soil. I'm not interested in giving the big box hardware and lumber stores more monthly and yearly profits. I reuse what's stacked up behind those stores heading for a landfill and become creative in reusing something free for the taking. 😂
I have three foot between beds to allow for a wheel barrow and be able to get past the wheel barrow
Video mal concebido y muy desaprovechado…
No tiene sentido ver el 90 % del video una cara hablando a la cámara, cuando al mismo tiempo debería estar mostrando imágenes que ejemplifiquen lo que está describiendo.
Que narcisismo!… 😂
Wood Got Very Expensive for me in California, So I went to home depot and purchased Cedar Dog Eared Fence Boards for the Sides of my planter. I even figured out a way with my skill saw to rip the length of the board to cut in half so that I could cut shorter support and trim pieces. Boards $2.75 ea for a 5.5" x 6 ft long board they are only about 3/4" WIDE OR MAYBE 5/8" So you have to make sure your design will have good enough structural support to stay together and to last a while. Cedar is a redwood, no treatments, and lasts longer than fir. I screwed and glued everything (make sure your parts fit before gluing (measure twice). I kept my boxes no wider or taller than three boards, most of them are only two boards, or if you're good enough at ripping the fence boards and having a semi straight cut you can put a half size 2.75" wide in the middle. Always 3 boards wide, 2 to 2.5 or 3 boards tall.
I found that using recycled plastic 4" x 4" x 8' posts work great for creating beds. Its environmentally friendly, can be easily moved and lasts forever.
Lots of good advice! I made the paths around my raised beds a little wider than the width of my garden cart, to make it easier to haul compost and mulch in and weeds and other debris out.
My tip for beds, is NEVER use aluminum nails. You want something that can be picked up with a strong magnet. Otherwise you can up with hazards in the soil that don't rust away and is hard to find and remove.
Note that tetanus is not inherent to rust. It's inherent to soil, so aluminum nails without rust are still just as bad as the iron nail that's half rusted way, except the aluminum nail sticks around forever.
Personally I'm really liking the look of those fabric beds, seems like it's going to be a good fit for me.
Great video
Very informative video thank you so much, stunning
0:37 – 1. Making the bed too long or wide
1:48 – 2. Making your beds too shallow
4:01 – 3. Using the wrong material
6:14 – 4. Wrong growing medium (labeled wrong as #5 in video)
8:38 – 5. Not refreshing the soil
9:50 – 6. Not mulching
11:24 – 7. Not preparing beds for winter
Thanks!
Good advice for sure. I made raised beds using 2×4’s and metal roofing. Framed them with the 2×4’s and the metal roofing was on the inside so the lumber has no contact with the soil. We love them because they’re 4’ high and no bending over to pick the strawberries.
Also never use pressure-treated lumber for raised beds. They pressure treat lumber with three cancer, causing chemicals, which will leach into your soil and leach into you.
Slugs and snails…. fix a copper band around the bed and the slugs and snails will not get in to your bed.
The copper band can be fixed either on the side or at the top. The snails and slugt can not move over the copper band. Trust me it works wonder.
Tried very hard to grow sweet potatoes for a couple of years. But the rats got into them and decimated my harvest.
Good advice! Except I take issue with your statement at 6:44 that you could never just dig your hands into the ground.
I have been using "piled up" raised beds for years, double-digging the,m, never ever walking on them, and adding compost every year, plus mulch. My native soil is heavy clay, but by the time a bed is a couple years old, I can just dig my hands into the soil.
Even in my ornamental gardens, which don't get the nearly the TLC I give the soil in the vegetable garden, the soil gets pretty loose after a few years of repeated mulching.
This year I am expanding my vegetable garden, changing the layout, and adding wooden sides to the beds. I'm filling the new beds with excess "nurtured" soil from the established beds, plus lots of compost made from yard and kitchen waste. I mulch vegetables with grass clippings (or shredded leaves in the early spring) and I mulch ornamental gardens with purchased wood chips.
You can also use old Bathtubs. They are just great and last you a very long time 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Watch buying bagged mulch, could have ground up treated lumber in it. Especially dyed mulch
Very good video brother! Great info! Very useful!
This laziness amazes me… Why do you need to raise the soil? If you plant vegetables at ground level, do they stop growing or what?🤦♂
I made my beds right under one of an old cloth lines so I could use the line to tie trellis lines to. I have two clothes lines in my back yard. I use the other for my clothes.
"air pruning" – it's a useful thing to know about.
I added what I thought was fresh soil to the top layer of my raised bed this year. But now I see it was infested with marsh slugs! What do I do?!!
So what are the 7 mistakes…