If you plan vegetable cultivation correctly, you can feed yourself from your own garden almost all year round. If you set up your raised bed accordingly, you can store all the tools you need - for example in integrated compartments and shelves.
How can you create a raised bed correctly?
To create a raised bed, first build a stable structure made of wood, metal or stone, ideally fill it with compost and soil in autumn and plant it in spring. Choose easy-care vegetables and observe crop rotation and mixed cultivation for a successful harvest.
When is the best time to build the raised bed?
Compost raised beds should be created in the fall if possible so that they can mature over the winter and you can finally top up with fresh soil in the spring. This will prevent the bed from collapsing when you have just planted it. This method also provides your plants with more nutrients. Raised beds, which are only filled with soil, can only be set up shortly before planting in spring - there is no risk of them collapsing.
Choosing the right vegetables for the raised bed
If you are a beginner when it comes to raised bed gardening, start by choosing vegetables that are as easy to grow as possible, such as lettuce, radishes, basil, zucchini, tomatoes and squash. Beans and peas also grow almost by themselves - as do parsley, chives, leeks and celery. This way you can gain a sense of achievement and build up the necessary expertise at your leisure.
Choice of varieties
Don't just plant or sow any lettuce, pay attention to the variety. Especially when it comes to cabbage, lettuce, celery and carrots, there are special varieties on the market that were created specifically for cultivation at different times of the year. With such variants, many types of vegetables can be grown all year round. “Early” lettuce varieties tolerate cold temperatures better, while late varieties do not mind the heat in summer and do not bloom prematurely. This flowering ahead of time is also known in technical language as “shooting” or, depending on the region, “shooting”. Leafy vegetables in particular, such as lettuce, spinach and chard, as well as many herbs, are prone to this when there are frequent changes in the weather, extreme heat or late planting.
Sowing or planting?
Many vegetables are sown directly in raised beds. For some sensitive species, such as tomatoes, the short summer in our latitudes is not enough for the plant to have enough time for the fruits to ripen. The gardener gets around this problem with a simple trick: He simply prefers sensitive vegetables to the windowsill, cold frame or greenhouse. These pre-grown young plants have a head start of up to eight weeks - this way you can make optimal use of the valuable, limited cultivated area in the raised bed. Then only sow vegetables such as carrots or radishes that cannot be grown directly into the raised bed.
Cultivation planning
Proper cultivation planning in the garden is quite complicated: crop rotations must be observed, certain vegetables must not be planted next to others and a break must be taken after a season. In raised beds, gardeners are more independent of many factors: For example, the same types of vegetables can be grown in the same spot for many years in a row, after all, new soil is replenished every year. Nevertheless, it makes sense if you also follow a few basic rules of crop rotation and mixed culture in raised beds.
Crop rotation
Crop rotation must be observed, especially in raised beds
Crop rotation or rotation refers to the annual change in cultivation of different types of vegetables. The reason for this is that vegetables from the same plant families should only be grown in the same area in the same soil three to four years apart. This will prevent pathogens such as fungi or nematodes from spreading more and more in the soil. Cruciferous vegetables in particular, which include all types of cabbage, but also rocket, garden cress, kohlrabi and radishes are susceptible to the resulting diseases. In the cases mentioned, club root would destroy the crop. This is a root disease whose pathogen survives in the soil for many years.
Optimal utilization of the different nutrient composition in raised beds
A second aspect that is taken into account in crop rotation is nutrient requirements. Vegetables and herbs are classified into heavy, medium and weak feeders depending on how many nutrients they need for he althy growth. In a classic raised bed with compost layering, the nutrient supply is very high in the first year - ideal for heavy eaters. Medium eaters follow in the second year and low eaters the next year. A crop rotation in the raised bed could, for example, look like this:
- 1. Year: tomatoes, celeriac, cabbage, zucchini
- 2. Year: Swiss chard, carrots, beetroot, lettuce and spinach
- 3. Year: Peas, beans, herbs, onions and leeks
Of course, you can also plant medium and weak feeders in the bed in the first year. They will then grow a little more lushly and many nutrients will remain unused, but the cultivation will still work.
Mixed Culture
Another strategy for as much variety as possible in the bed - and thus less susceptibility to disease - is mixed culture. Here too, the nutrient requirements of the different plants are taken into account, so you can plant heavy feeders next to weak feeders (so that they don't get in each other's way), but also shallow-rooted plants next to deep-rooted plants. This method has several advantages: All nutrients are optimally utilized, and the denser planting means there are no gaps in the bed. In addition, some species promote each other's growth, while others hinder each other.
- Good neighbors are, for example, carrots and onions; cabbage and celery; Cabbage and marigolds as well as parsley and marigolds.
- Bad neighbors are beans and peas; beans and onions/leeks; cucumbers and tomatoes; cabbage and onions; Lettuce and parsley as well as lettuce and celery.
Tip
So that you don't have to harvest all the vegetables at once and then don't know what to do with them: Plant or sow only small quantities of carrots, lettuce, beans or peas every two to four weeks. This means that only a small amount is ready for harvest, which you can easily use up until the next batch is harvested.
