Have you always wanted to have a garden and grow your own fresh produce? With the price of groceries continuing its upward climb, now is a good time to build a garden of raised beds. The price of lumber has come down since Covid times and early spring is the best time to build these raised beds. You can build these beds in April and plant immediately for spring and summer harvests.
This blog post is the final post in my three-part series on raised garden beds. In the first post, I shared the building plans for the project, my planting plan, and the sources for all my supplies. In the second post, I showed you how to build the raised beds, the finished beds, and my early plantings. For this post, Backyard Raised Garden Beds – Part 3 Growing, I will show you how the garden looks at its peak and will share my lessons learned from this experience.
PROJECT RECAP
The plan was to build three identical 4′ by 8′ raised garden beds for the back of our suburban backyard. I decided on a planter box depth of 23.5″ to give a sufficient depth on our slightly sloping ground. I chose a sunny location in our yard so that I could grow vegetables for our family to enjoy all season long.
BUILDING PLANS FOR THE BACKYARD RAISED GARDEN BEDS
I found these easy-to-use and free plans from RealCedar.com. They provide detailed plans and a video of the construction process. You can see the plans I used here. I followed the plans exactly except I added an extra 2 by 6 board on each side for extra height. The finished height of my raised beds is 23.5″ including the top ledge.
THE PLANTINGS
I used the Old Farmer’s Almanac Garden Planner to create a plan for the raised beds. It was easy to use and it provided me with a visual plan, supply list, and useful information about the planting and care of each plant. You can view my planting plans here.
ASSEMBLY OF THE RAISED GARDEN BEDS
I chose to construct the long side of the planter boxes in the garage. I also cut all the pieces and mitred corners in the garage before moving everything to the backyard for the final construction. The boxes would have been too large and heavy to move if I had completely assembled them in the garage first. It was a rewarding process and finishing those last few pieces was very satisfying. I decided to leave the cedar in its natural condition to have an organic and chemical-free garden.
PLANTS
I decided to grow all of my plants from seeds indoors while construction of the beds occurred outdoors. The seeds were purchased from The Home Depot as they had a great selection of organic seeds and heirloom varieties. I used planting trays and seed-starting soil mix and I placed the trays next to the window. Once the weather improved, I placed the trays outdoors for a few hours each day to harden off the seedlings and prepare them for planting.
Some of my planned plants, like peas, beans, carrots, radishes, and swiss chard prefer to be planted directly outdoors, so these ones I planted as seeds directly in the raised beds. I grew the nasturtiums, dill, cilantro, cucumbers, zucchini, corn, beets, kale, lettuce, zucchini, cucumber, and nasturtiums indoors.
THE GARDEN THROUGHOUT THE GROWING SEASON
SPRING
In spring, the plants took root and began to grow. I was able to harvest kale and lettuce within a couple weeks of moving the plants into the garden. We were able to harvest lettuce until the end of July when the hot temperatures caused the lettuce to bolt. I was able to harvest the kale all summer and fall until the snow arrived in November.
SUMMER
All the plants continued to grow and produce vegetables for our family. In the summer, I harvested lettuce, kale, swiss chard, nasturtium leaves and flowers, zucchini, beans, cucumbers, radishes (3 rounds), peas, carrots, and many herbs. We grew tomatoes in our other garden (not raised) and the harvest was smaller than in previous years as that garden is now in partial shade due to a tree we planted several years ago. This coming season, I plan to grow tomatoes in the raised beds.
FALL
We continued to have a good harvest in the fall, with kale, swiss chard, a third round of radishes, beans, and herbs. We were finally able to harvest our corn, but sadly it was not very good. It was tough and not very flavourful. I don’t think I will be planting corn again until I have the chance to do a little more research on this crop. Our climate here in Ottawa isn’t the best for corn and this area of Canada is not known for its corn production. For the amount of corn I harvested (maybe 12 cobs), I think I would be better off plating tomatoes instead.
Once the zucchini plants finished producing fruit, I removed them and added some natural grasses and fall mums to the middle raised bed. This added some colour and fall flair to the garden and filled what would have been an empty spot. The garden looked really pretty at this time of the year with the nasturtiums in full bloom and spilling over the sides of the raised bed.
TIPS AND LESSONS LEARNED
- Do some research on the benefits of raised beds. The additional height I added worked in preventing the rabbits from eating our plants.
- Use the Farmer’s Almanac garden planner to plan out your growing season. I was very impressed with the results and plan to use this resource every year.
- Look into companion planting and the benefits of pairing certain plants together.
- Find out the best plants and varieties for your location.
- Plant your favourite vegetables and the ones you would likely spend the most money on at the grocery store.
- Add in a few flowers or flowering plants for visual interest and beauty. I adored the nasturtiums and sunflowers.
- Plan to have multiple plantings of vegetables like radishes, carrots, and peas.
SUMMARY
Thank you for reading my post, Backyard Raised Garden Beds – Part 3. If you’re thinking about starting your own raised garden beds, I hope you found this post useful. If you liked this post, take a peek at some of my other posts that have to do with plants and gardening.
Backyard Raised Garden Beds – Part 1 Planning
Backyard Raised Garden Beds – Part 2 Building and Planting
Summer Front Porch Decor For A Small Porch
Create An Inviting Front Porch For Fall
6 Indoor Houseplants Perfect For Farmhouse Decor
These are beautiful!
Thank you so much Cindy!