I am a gardener who absolutely loves raised bed gardening!

Now you have to know that its harder to set up a raised bed than a normal bed and it also needs more attention, but the rewards you get for your effort are in my opinion well worth it! I will explain to you exactly how you plan your garden, then select the right plants and then plant and keep them alive.

Crucial step that almost nobody does is to first draw a small map of the garden. It doesn't has to be great looking, just make a quick sketch so that you have an idea on where everything is and where the space is. Go ahead and select all the places you could use for raised beds.

I usually find a lot of places, in front of the porch, left and right of the porch and everywhere in the garden itself. Let your creativity lead you to what you think is beautiful. Raised Bed gardening does not need alot of space, just fit the beds everywhere you think they look good.

The next step on your journey is to select the plants you want. You can buy a variety of plants for raised bed gardening, vegetables, flowers and even herbs. If you want to get started right away, just buy the plants and not the seeds since you have to sow most of them in the late winter indoors. Though a lot of flowers are fine with being sowed a little bit later outside.

If you know what you want don't buy it yet, first go and build the raised beds. The idea of an raised bed is following: you put a layer of stones or something else on the ground, then fence it with wood pieces or even railroad ties and then you fill the bed with new soil. This has alot of advantages like that the plants will be less likely to be attacked by diseases or pests and its especially helpful if the soil in your garden is not nutrient enough or simply too badly drained to keep plants alive. If you create a bed this way it will be very well drained and the soil will also be fluffy which is also good for alot of plants. You can of course also use something different from stones, I also like to elevate the whole bed, use two bigger pieces of wood on the ground and then build a smaller bed on top of it. With this though you have to make sure that it is well drained, drill some wholes into the bottom you use for the elevated bed.

Once you've built the bed its time for the soil. You should definitely use some soil out of your garden but if its not that great also get some pot soil from the gardening shop and some sand (this should be about 50% of the mix soil). Mix it all together to get a great soil. In Addition to this i often use compost to make it more nutrient. Renew this about every month for vegetables and herbs though its also fine to just use alot of compost. Water the plants daily if its not raining and you will be fine.

If you planted your plants a good idea is to use some mulch to protect them from diseases and frost in the colder seasons.

So you are now almost ready for raised bed gardening. One thing that you have to know though is that even with raised bed gardening you still have to rotate the vegetables every year.

Ok now you know it, plan the garden, select the plant and then build the raised beds. That's how you do raised bed gardening.