Where did all this,'Raised Bed' gardening come from?

[Mike Allen]

So here I go, apologising from the start. Friends, garden lovers. I mean no disrespect. OK. I'm an oldie. I have worked my way up through the horticultural world. Times past. The average person had the back yard or garden. They toiled it and did their bit to, Grow for Britain and all of that. We dug the ground, perhaps digging ing some kitchen waste etc. Some of us may have had allotments. Here so much more could be grown. There was none of this. Constructing of timber framed planting areas. Such were not heard of. So what's gone wrong?

So what's wrong with cultivatin the natural ground, compared to spending out on timber and importing foreign soils etc. For instance. Charlie Brown constructs an oversize seed tray. He plants , say 2-3doz cabbage plants. After the birds have taken their amount. Then considering pest control. At the end of the day. I wonder. Just how much that savoy cabbage for Sundays dinner really cost. Tesco are charging 70p.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Ah- well drained soil is a phrase that became important. In our clay that means go up or work twice as hard digging since clay is denser and thus more massive than so many more fortunate types of plant anchoring material.

 

[Mick Emery]

I started gardening, in raised beds, after I read Square Foot Gardening. While many SFGs don't use raised beds, a lot do. The garden was SO much easier to do & maintain. (little to no weeds, for example) My harvests were also a lot bigger using less land. My new home is situated on ground that won't accept a shovel. (not even an inch!) All in ground plants were placed using a pick-axe to make a hole & then filled with amended soil. Also, my raised beds contain no soil. While the books suggests using 1/3 peat, 1/3 vermiculite & 1/3 compost, I use compost, peat & sand.

 

[marlingardener]

Different folks, different strokes. I do both in-ground and raised bed gardens. Really don't prefer one over the other, but I have found that the sandy soil in back of the barn becomes quicksand after a hard rain or two, and the seasonal garden drains well. The raised beds are in back of the barn, the seasonal in the barn lot.

 

[Chuck-D]

Raised beds enable those with no access to natual soil or those like my self who do not have good natural soil to have a garden or to have more nanageable soil .
Raised gardens have been around for better than 100 years , ther are erly example in NYC photographs from the 1940's through the 1950's
Al Capone kept planting boxes on his balcony essentially a small raised garden.

 

[roadrunner]

This guy builds very high beds, because he has injuries that make it difficult to always be bending down to ground level. I very much like how he fills these beds, especially the base. He isn't buying tons of bagged soils.

 

[headfullofbees]

Progress.
That's what's happened.
Raised beds warm earlier in the spring, cool later in the autumn and so can make crops, which are marginal otherwise, worthwhile.
They also drain much quicker after wet weather, and the soil medium can have the texture desired (to a great extent) which for most veg is a light tilth.
They also make weeding much easier.
Brassicas still do better in "the ground", as they prefer to be well supported, plus, if your raised beds are as high as in the above video, you are likely to avoid one real hammer of a pest, carrot root fly, which has trouble getting more than 2 ft off the ground.
I use them mostly for alliums & I NEVER suffer from white rot.