Could the humble raised vegetable garden save the planet? Too many people see gardening as merely a past time for retired folk, but in the last few days I have had my eyes opened to the raw power of raised gardens.

In this article I want to explain why I am starting to believe that growing your own vegetables at home in a raised bed garden could help solve poverty, famine, heart disease, cancer, and even global warming. This might sound like a tall order, but hear me out.

The raison detre for a raised vegetable garden is that it lends itself to locations that don’t have the right kind of conditions for growing pretty much anything let alone luscious fruits and vegetables. Coupled with the fact that they require less weeding, this ancient gardening technique has the potential to empower the individual to produce their own nutritious food supply.

Whether they know it or not, just about everybody on the planet is in great need of this level of freshness in their veggies. It is nothing less than a life saver because your vegetables are far more delicious than the tasteless ones in the supermarket, so you eat more of them.

Raised vegetable gardens are helping people in certain parts of Africa to get out of poverty and famine. The charity “Send a Cow” has been teaching people how they can grow vegetables in areas that were thought impossible. Rocky terrains and hard cracked soils are no problem for a raised bed, as all that is really needed is a good source of sunlight.

However, in developed countries it could be argued that there is just as greater need for such a life-saving intervention. Heart disease and cancer have become such a huge problem in developed countries, and scientists are placing most of the blame on our junk food diets. Although, it is not a popular belief, it is probably true that the developed world has just as large a malnutrition problem as any other part of the world. Yet, with the right mindset this problem could be greatly alleviated with a raised garden.

Perhaps the most important thing I want to explain about growing your own vegetables is how it could help avert catastrophic climate change.

For the average individual, a very significant portion of their carbon footprint comes from food miles. In other words, most food in the supermarket has been transported from several thousand miles away in order to reach the store. The pollution that this creates is monumental, but at the time of writing it is pretty much ignored by everyone.

My favourite thing about the raised vegetable garden is that you can have a free, and endless supply of amazingly delicious vegetables, without impacting the environment at all.

If you were to compare supermarket fruit and veg to the stuff you can grow in your own backyard, on taste alone you would never go back to your store again. Freshly picked ripe produce is at least 10 times more tasty. This factor should be enough to convince most people to invest the small effort required. However, when you factor in the other massive benefits then it’s really a no-brainer.

Don’t delay, it’s easier than ever to start your own raised bed garden. In this blog you will find the very best information collected from around the web to help you get started with your own raised vegetable bed.

photo: flickr.com/photos/adamraoof

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I want to build a raised bed garden, but I am doing it on a shoestring (no actual money, just a nasty old shoestring). I am looking for at least 140 linear feet of material. The wall will be around 10 inches tall, so it should be something that can either be easily cut down with normal tools, or that can be stacked that high somehow. The material shouldn’t leach any toxic whateverz into the soil, as the plants will be vegetables.

Thanks guys!

I use old tanks from an out-of-business seafood store. The drains mean a ready-made drainage system, and I didn’t even bother to clean the insides, since the fish waste makes good fertilizer.

Plus, they’re up on legs, about waist-high, making it easier to work ‘em, especially for my sweetie, who has physical problems and doesn’t bend over so easily.

Eight bucks apiece plus twenty dollars to a fella with a pickup truck to bring them to my house.
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I’m planning on growing zuchini, cucumber, strawberry, and maybe some others? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

With what you’re growing, it’s best to use a combination of the garden mix and peat moss.
The soil in the area in which I live is similar to yours: Clay with a lot of rocks.
To save on the expense, you can use compost and peat moss.
What I have found to be the most efffective method is to use a pitch fork to break up the peat moss, then put the compost over the peat. Use the pitch fork to combine the two.
It is very time consuming, but you will not be disaapointed with the results.

On a side note, plant marigolds near the plants.
These will help keep some of the leaf eating bugs away from your squash.

MG is made from chemicals designed for quick absorption by the growing plants, so adding MG to the soil this far in advance does little good. By the time you add the seeds nine weeks from now, the MG will have lost almost half of its potency. MG is good for only three months, on average.

step-by-step please…i am willing to read long answers!

Dig up the soil, add compost & decayed leaf mulch to the soil along with either Gypsum or lime. Gypsum won’t change your soil Ph. Lime makes the soil less acid. Both make the soil less compact & makes it drain better. You can add sand to the soil too, if you have a lot of clay. Lay down a thick layer of newspapers to kill the grass, then lay a thick mulch on top of it. Or you can lay down plastic or some material that suffocates weeds & that you can poke a big enough hole to put in a plant when you’re ready.

I usually dig up an area ahead of time before winter. The freezing & thawing helps kill the weeds, then I add the compost & gypsum or lime. When it’s time to plant, I dig up a big enough area for each plant, remove any huge compacted clumps, & replace it with topsoil or compost. Sometimes I add some peat moss for acid-loving plants. Then I put in my plants & add mulch around them.

Here’s a forum you may enjoy, on how others have made a garden in a raised bed:
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg0221102423083.html
Good luck! Hope this helps.