The Princess and the Pea - the Original Raised Bed

There is no question about it; this lovely red Hill Country clay soil is not ideal for gardening. In fact, the only thing it IS good for is making clods to throw at tomato thieving squirrels. The concern for me was how to live with it. I decided not to and opted for raised beds that I would load with topsoil or compost.

There are a couple of ways to make raised beds. The most expensive is to buy a kit from a garden center or catalog. They look great but are a little out of my budget. Oh sure, I'll drop a hundred bucks on plants without blinking. But on something that won't grow? I have a hard time justifying it.

The least expensive is to just pile soil. You can put some courser rock or branches down as the first layer to help with drainage, and then pile on soil until it's the desired height. This works great but as the season progresses the soil tends to move around and get into the paths. I hate walking on perfectly good dirt and the messiness goes against a far buried neat and tidy gene. This method can be really handy if you plan on tilling your garden area or are not quite sure how you want things arranged.

You can make a container for your raised bed by outlining it with rocks, big branches, boards, or even cement blocks. All will work. I considered using rock, since there are big limestone pieces in every ditch and wayside place, but I was worried that the radiant heat would cook my plants. The previous homeowner used a combination of rock and four by four boards.

From Austin Yard

I'd pretty much decided to use big branches in a lincoln log style when I noticed a pile of discarded fence near my home. A church had replaced their wooden fence with a concrete one, and had left the fence segments lying next to it for weeks. Lucky for me that I have a pickup so one fine Saturday my husband and I loaded the segments and hauled them home.

From Scrounging

The trick with any raised bed is to decide how tall to make it. A lot of that depends on where you live. In a colder climate you raise the bed three to six inches to create a warm seed germination and seedling zone. The assumption being that your bed will warm up faster than the surrounding cold ground. Here in Texas I had to think about the heat and wind. I had Ed make the containers taller than I normally would in Oregon so the top boards could act as a windshield.

From Scrounging

We also made the beds a little shorter than normal. The cedar boards were six feet long, but many had a lot of rot on the end that had stood on the ground. The boxes ended up being four feet wide by about 5 foot 10 inches long. I can always place them end-to-end if I have a space that calls for a longer run.

I'm pretty pleased at how they are turning out. My windshield idea works nicely and my top soil layers aren't blowing over to the neighbors. As I pile in leaves, soil, and compost, I keep thinking of the Princess and the Pea fable which I'm convinced is really an allegory about gardening. Think about it. Haven't you been battered and bruised because of excessive pea planting? All that stooping. The only solution is to create higher raised beds so you don't have to bend over so much. Just keep piling on those mattresses of organic matter. Adopt raised bed gardening and your back will be pain-free and you'll sleep like a princess. Trust me.