Raised bed or in the ground garden

It's about time to plan and prepare my garden. Last year was a disappointment. My question is whether I should make raised beds this year or try again in the ground. I have materials to make raised beds and my neighbor can give me chicken bedding and manure to help the soil. It will be the same work either way.

I think it comes down to what you want to get out of your gardens on a particular site.

I had to make the same decision when I started gardening and I settled on raised beds.



I have a lot of large stone in the ground on this particular part of my yard. Digging was a challenge and throughout the garden are different types of soils. One corner seems more gravely and stoney while the opposite corner was practically clay. I made the decision to make boxes and to import clean topsoil/compost to fill them. The first year was okay, second year better, and now I am having some good harvests. I think having the planting beds raised in the spring helps thaw them out faster from the winter freeze and jumpstart some plants growth.



I intentionally have big pathways that I cover in mulch to break down. I have inoculated it with mushroom spawn and some wild mushrooms  also have taken their sections. My wife likes to try her hand at container gardening and we will put her pots and bags at the end of the bed rows in the middle. I can move a wheelbarrow around throughout and just enjoy my time. The raised beds also provided some structure to put up a rabbit fence.

What is your gardening site like? What challenges might it present you?

The downside to raised beds is depending on the materials used, they will eventually degrade and need replacement. I used two inch rough cut pine and it really has been holding up well even with the fungal activity.

I have materials set to build corrugated metal frames for my raised beds. I plan on laying a layer of cardboard, 2 inches of mulch, them 8 inches of soil. Is this a good start

Hi Stephen, There are pluses and minuses of raised beds, dependent on your climate and abilities. One of the big positives might be to make the growing surface easier to get to if you have personal mobility issues (less bending down). A Counterbalancing negative would be the need for wider access paths since barrows would not pass between them easily if they were close together.
What sort of mulch are you thinking of? I would normally prefer to put mulch on the surface as nature does - that protects the surface from rain and extremes of temperature. In drier climates I gather that surface mulch can stop rain percolating in, and also stop soils warming up in spring in colder climates. We have a whole forum discussing mulch mind you!

Hi Stephen,
I generally fall into the people who say that you should create raised beds if you have a reason for it. Otherwise, just use the ground.

You mention that your garden did not do well last year... but you don't say what happened or what didn't work. As has been mentioned, raised beds have advantages and disadvantages. Can you share more about what went wrong? I would hate for you to go through the work of building raised beds and then have another bad year. It might be better to put the effort into the soil on the ground.

A side note.... for the manure and bedding. Whether it is a raised bed or not, make sure the manure is well-aged... preferably composted... before using. Fresh manure can burn plants, and adding straw or shavings mixed into soil can cause some nitrogen problems in the beginning.

Raised beds drastically improved my results.
Even in plots that had been heavily amended, raised beds have done better.
I'm not sure if it's anything more complex than piling it higher and deeper, and not diluting the good stuff with sand , clay and rocks.

Matt wrote:You mention that your garden did not do well last year... but you don't say what happened or what didn't work... Can you share more about what went wrong? I would hate for you to go through the work of building raised beds and then have another bad year. It might be better to put the effort into the soil on the ground.

This! And just in case your problem is related to a soggy area, take a look at my solution. In your case, as you already have the supplies, I'd make the raised beds instead of my solution of digging out the paths.

I love your raised bed garden @Timothy! Especially the trellises. 😊

I, too have raised beds. I love this question because it is something I have been grappling with for many years, even though I'm not really a beginner gardener anymore. So here are some of my thoughts:

Build raised bed gardens if you have a decent amount of rainfall, live in a place that tends to be soggy or waterlogged, and you don't have to deal with drought. Raised beds for soggy places. Sunken/in-ground beds for desert-like places.

Build raised bed gardens if you have a decent amount of rainfall, live in a place that tends to be soggy or waterlogged, and you don't have to deal with drought. Raised beds for soggy places. Sunken/in-ground beds for desert-like places.

Build raised beds if you have a back problem. Build higher beds especially if you don't like to stoop.

Build raised beds when gardening with children. Children need to know where the path ends and the garden begins.

Build raised beds if you have a Marie Kondo Aesthetic. Build in-ground beds if you're a Beatrix Potter type or like things more organic looking. There's nothing to say that your raised beds cannot have a curvy shape. I like curvy shapes. I think they seem more natural, but all my raised beds are built by my husband so use what/whoever you have on hand.

Build in-ground beds if you have many beds and are looking to do an efficient farming system where you'll be passing through with some equipment, wheelbarrow, scythe, or tractor. Especially if you like growing trees. No use having raised beds for those, unless you are designing in the context of an urban setting.

I hope those pointers help! Let us all know what you decide on in the end, and share pics. Here are some of mine:

One are is my research beds: (I do Compost tea Research



And this the other is our production garden: (We grow most of our fruits and veggies here at the moment)



But I honestly wish I had a more curvy layout that follows the contours of the land.

Reasons for raised beds:

1. Soil quality control. Our area is full of rocks (often when the rocks are removed there’s little left!) and sometimes heavy with clay that can encourage root rot. It took us three years of composting/amending to create decent in-ground planting areas. On the other hand, our raised beds, filled with a mix of equal parts native topsoil, humus, and a drainage enhancer like perlite or vermiculite, worked well from the start. Notably the optimal soil allows for dense planting which means less weeding.

2. Less bending over. For weeding and other maintenance I often sit on a little milking stool alongside the bed, or on the edge of the bed itself.

3. Raised beds are more sensitive to air temperature, so warm up faster in the spring, which in our zone gives us an extra week of growing season… One would expect that the effect would go the other way in the fall, but for some reason we haven’t been able to detect a difference between in-ground and raised bed soil temps at the end of the season.

All this became academic for us when one of our raised beds needed replacing and we instead turned to hügelkulture. Never looked back.

For me a raised bed is only more accessible if it is 20-30" high and no  more than 4 feet wide (and I have  only a 29" inseam). Shorter and/or wider makes  it harder for me to plant, tend, and harvest.  I can't fully explain why 12" is harder, but I found my back  was more sore (still bending, and  more likely with a twist??) than when working ground level  gardens.

Ditto on all the above  re soil/dirt type and  weather considerations.

I started my garden with 2 or 3 raised beds because it was in a section of badly degraded soil and my neighbor had some 2x10 planks she was getting rid of. A trailer full of mushroom compost and a little topsoil and I was ready to go the first season living on the property.

However, the wood was old to begin with and in a few years I had to make a decision. New raised beds? Or in-ground? I chose beds that are corrugated tin or some kind of metal, with  braces that go across the short way, for stability. I have been able to expand with more beds, some with scrap lumber and some with black locust logs. As they degrade, I have replaced with more of the metal beds. And my soil, after 10 years and countless barrows of compost and leaf mold, is now as valuable as my house. Well....I mean...you know what I mean.

Anyway, the latest garden expansion is on a slight slope and I decided to create berms and swales, not really deep or high because the slope isn't steep. I have started planting more perennials in the berms; maybe some annual veggies will be tucked in here and there. As the soil gets better, I will put in more berries and flowers and not sure what all.

So, it does depend on what you are planting, what your climate is, what you have to begin with. If you don't know, do a bit of dumpster diving/scavenging and get some free or cheap lumber and just get started with 1 or 2. Then you can decide from there how they work and  if you want to make changes.

We do raised beds because we have poor growing conditions.

Not much grows in caliche, aka ground limestone so we make the soil for our raised beds.

Our property has a 5-foot by 5-foot patch of clay.

We bag leaf mold from under the hundreds of oak trees.

So we mix clay, leaf mold, compost, well rotten manure, and some bagged garden soil.

Here in the high desert riparian area oak trees and spring one hour east of San Diego, I have sunken hugel beds. The tops are flat with forest soil, compost, mulch and irrigation. To keep out gophers and squirrels, I have 1/4" wire mesh on the bottom and 1/2" wire mesh hoop houses on top. Tall enough for corn, pollinators can come and go. Rainy winters soak the beds, drip irrigation and mulch keep it moist. Some of the soil washes away, so I'm happy to know that 12" of soil is what I want to keep above the bottom mesh. Soil and water spills onto the path, so maybe I'll use bricks to make a low wall. Wood breaks down quickly. I also have small cages for strawberries and asparagus. Medium size for raspberries and grapes.