I should add. This is an all vegetable garden with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and maybe lettuce to be planted.

First, no "topsoil". For the most part it has little to offer in the way of quality and nutrients and while a little of it doesn't hurt, too much gives you drainage problems.

Second, what is the size of the bed? Unless your bed is going to be huge, think of it like a big container and fill it with a good growing mix composed of peat, vermiculite, and compost so that it doesn't compact and will provide good drainage.

There are literally hundreds of discussions here about 'what to fill my raised bed with' that the search will pull up for you to read for suggestions. But the final answer all depends on what you have available to you locally (check with local landscapers for bulk growing mix) , the size of the bed, and how much you want to spend. So can you give us that info please?

Dave

What to fill my raised bed with discussions

What are the dimensions of the raised bed? A 4'x10'x10" bed will need a little over 1 cubic yard to fill. Most nurseries or landscape suppliers carry a 'garden mix' and includes a percentage or 'top soil', compost, and composted manure that is usually pretty good stuff but you will want to inspect it first. You are probably a little late for lettuce now but all of the other things on your list should be OK if planted fairly soon.

Am I late for all lettuce varieties? Could I buy one as a "small plant" that may still work? I was told by local people who have gardens that I shouldn't plant anything before 10th, but maybe they didnt know lettuce was of interest to me.

I will reply will measurements tonight. Thank you to you both for your help! I really appreciate it

As for dementions, I was planning on 8'-10' by 4'-5', depending what are the easiest dementions with the fewest cuts and least amount of cedar purchased. Should I be buying 2" or 1" thick boards? And do I need a center support (bisecting the rectangle) to withstand the weight of the soil for this size garden?

And if I may, I have heard many people talk about posts, but recently read they can contribute to wood rotting because of additional ground contact; are they good or bad? If I use posts, would it be smart to add chicken wire around the parimeter to keep small animals out? I have a fence in my yard (with spacing) so larger animals wont be in the yard.

I hope all these questions are ok to ask at once. Thank you

Recommend no wider than 4' (short arms and small women often prefer 3' wide) so you can reach the plants in the center without walking on the bed. Walking on it only compacts the soil and that is one big advantages to raised beds over in ground beds - no wasted space on paths and no soil compaction. Any length is fine assuming good sun exposure. So you will need approx. 1 to 1.5 cubic yards of fill depending on the length.

Personally 2x boards are preferred as they are stronger and less likely to bow. But 2x cedar can be difficult to find and is expensive - all cedar is expensive for that matter - so if you use 1x boards yes, you will need some cross bracing - one every 3-4 feet to keep the sides from bowing out. Depth of the bed? Try for at least 12". 8" will work but 12" is much better.

Not sure what you mean by posts? You mean corner posts sunk in the ground? They sure make the bed stronger, more stable, and longer lasting. I've never seen any proof that they contribute wood rotting.

If you haven't even built the bed yet then yes it will be far too late for lettuces. You can plant them in the fall once the weather cools.

Dave

Since theses are going to be "permanent raised beds", a couple things to think about. agree with Dig about the dimentions. A few things we do when starting a new bed are to dig/fork down as deep as possible and break it up, add manure of choice (we get free horse manure) water it in, water it in again, place the beds Lined with hardware cloth if need be for gophers) add some soil from the landscape/garden place (NOT the hardware store! It's worth it to start off right!)water in again. Keep layering and watering till full to the top. It will sink as the season goes by.

I go with 3' paths if possible so you can maneuver wheelbarrows without having to step in other beds. 2' will work if you don't have the room (this is from experience with a bad back!)

Above all, have fun! Nancy

Thank you Dave. I have not yet built the bed. So that rules out lettuce. To be clear on your dementions when you say "depth" I assume that means that part of the board on the ground measured up to the sky, right? If I find 12" for that, do you still suggest some fence/wiring to keep out small animals? Or will that make it harder for me to weed and pick and tend to the plants? Thank you

You can always plant some lettuce in containers (either plants from the store or from seed; I don't think you're too late in PA, especially if you choose faster maturing or heat-tolerant varieties) if you don't want to miss out for this spring. That way, you can still enjoy something green now while giving yourself another few weeks to get the beds built in time for your tomatoes. Grab a container or two, a bag of potting mix, and a couple packs of seeds and jump in. :)

You are in a unique area where you have access to mushroom compost, farm manure (compost) from thousands of small Amish farms and hundreds of qualified landscapers with their products. You are surrounded by literally thousands of greenhouses offering bedding plants and produce months ahead of what is expected for your growing zone. So your better growing options would be fruits or veggies that would provide a fresh alternative and convenience to you and your family.

For building options just take a short drive and view what others have done, including a few of the restaurants. If I lived in your area I'd be frequenting the salad bar at Shady Maple.

Lettuce is a fall crop too. I would design the raised bed so it can become a low tunnel for early and late season use. pvc hoops, a little plastic, you are gardening from March - November

Kathy, what are type of heat tolerated or fast maturing lettuce? Thank you.

Nancy, does the hardware cloth also help prevent weeds or do I use a different material for that? Thank you.

Barrie, Shady Maple is a special place for sure. Is mushroom compost an ideal component I should use in my garden? Can i build this above ground garden and plant my vegitables all in the same weekend or must I do those two acts with some time between them? Thank you.

jnjfarm_gw,

I don't understand. What should I be doing with PVC?

PVC hoops - the hoops are the important part. You are making a low tunnel.

Mgold--here's a pic of PVC hoops on a raised bed. Many of the designs I've seen have you installing tubes to insert the PVC tubing into. This then gives you oodles of flexibility--short hoops with low crops like lettuce; talker hoops for things like brassicas that you can protect from bugs. If it stops raining, I can run out and take a pic of a low tunnel I have going right now with Agribon fabric to keep bugs from my cabbage. It's actually not on a raised bed, but I used pex tube loops stuck in the ground, with bricks to hold the edges down. Ended up needing a crossbar for more support.

Here's the thing with the PVC--if it's your first year, you may not want to mess with it. But it would be good to add the option while you're constructing your bed so that it's there if you need it in the future.

You are getting a lot of good info and suggestions. But they are for further down the line, later in the season, once you have the bed up and running. It simply isn't possible to do, much less learn, everything you need to know all at one time and you seem to be getting overwhelmed.

So for now why not concentrate on getting your ground spot dug up, your bed constructed, and your bed filled? All the rest comes later.

Nancy pointed out the hardware cloth is used for when you have gophers. It will not provide weed control. Digging and forking the ground that will be under you bed will eliminate most of those. If it is sod, it can be removed first. If you can't do that for some reason them the best other option is to lay down several layers of wet cardboard and then set the built bed on top of it. Over time the cardboard will kill the weeds and decompose.

There are some so-called "heat tolerant" lettuce varieties the will work in some garden zones but not in all. IMO right now you need to focus on getting the bed built or it will be late to plant anything. So forget about the lettuce issues until fall and then you can build a cover for the bed and plant your lettuce, ok?

Barrie had a great suggestion about the mushroom compost and he wouldn't have suggested it if it wasn't good to use in your garden when mixed with all the other ingredients already mentioned. He lives near there and from what he says there are hundreds of local sources for the bed filler you can buy from and then you can add mushroom compost to that and find some local composted manure as well. Then you can buy your pepper and tomato plants locally and direct seed your cucumbers.

But keep in mind that as Nancy said above, you don't plant right away, you fill and mix and water and mix it again and water some more and then add more filler in layers as needed to bring the bed up to the top of the box, mix and water it well. THEN you plant.

Hope that answers all your posted questions. Time to get to work! :)

Dave

The guy at a local gardening store (who was nice enough to direct me to a different store for a cheaper water timing device) mentioned I should use some Play Sand along with the peat moss, mushroom compost and manure mixtures. Any thought to the sand addition? I don't think people mentioned that above but maybe I missed it. Thanks

You need to get a good raised bed gardening book as a guide. maybe "square foot gardens" or maybe others have suggestions on guides. getting advice from the nice guy that is selling products is not always the way to go. Unless you want to grow $20 tomatoes.

Agreed that your focus should be on the basics of getting the beds built, and that you shouldn't stress about the advanced stuff yet. Gardening is a learning process, so don't feel you are behind by not tackling everything at once. Take on what you can reasonably manage, then tweak things going forward. That's part of the fun. :)

For the lettuce, I still think you have little to lose by growing a container of it this spring, assuming it would be fun of you and not just one more thing that will take your time away from building your gardens. Planning to grow it in the fall is certainly a great compromise. :) If you want to try for spring, just do an internet search for "heat tolerant lettuce varieties" and see if any of the results match up with what's available on your local seed rack or seedlings available at the nursery. (Existing plants would speed up your process considerably but are, of course, more expensive than a pack of seeds.) Planting in a container lets you temporarily move the pot into the shade (or even inside) if it gets really hot outside. And if the plants end up bolting sooner than you'd expect, you'll have a good data point for for next spring. :)

Can't help too much with the play sand question, but I personally wouldn't worry about it. I have dense, clay-type soil in my area and I loosen it by adding lots of compost, not sand. There are advantages to clay in the soil, too -- it retains good moisture during the hot, hot days of July and August. In fact, I ended up adding some of my regular garden soil back into one of my raised beds last year because it was too well-draining. As I said, it's a learning process. :)

Kathy

Did he say why? The reasons given for why the advice is what often determines if it is worthwhile advice or not.

Some folks who are gardening in ground (dirt), not raised beds, will use some coarse sand to improve drainage IF they have heavy clay soil. But you are filling a raised bed with a pre-mixed growing mix, not soil, not dirt. So assuming you get a good quality growing mix composed of peat and compost, vermiculite, etc. then adding more sand would not be needed for any reason. Can you add some if you wish? Sure but since gardening in raised beds and gardening in-ground are two very different things it likely isn't needed. :)

Dave

I was able to find cedar at a reasonable price from a local store. My bed has been built, but do I need to stain or do anything to the wood to help protect it from the many (future) years of sun/rain?

And no the person at the store didnt say "why" other than 'its the mixture he uses in his above ground garden'. As I pointed out, he direct me to other stores for two different items because 'it was more costly at the store where he worked', so I didn't assume he was selling me sand to up sell me. I did, however, wonder if he knew what he was talking about as I haven't seen such a term on this forum topic - and that's why I asked. I appreciate the help from everyone!!

Sandy soil is desired but not required for growing many root veggies like carrots, onions, garlic. A loose loam with a good organic matter percentage works equally well IMO. I wouldn't do anything to your cedar wood, it should hold up well for several years. As to heat tolerant lettuce, Jericho Romaine and Nevada Batavia type resist bolting well in my garden but I have always harvested them by early June after planting 3 week old starts in early April so they usually do not have to endure temps above mid 80s.

We added sand to several beds this year because our first year we had "topsoil" delivered to fill several large raised beds. The "topsoil" though was probably 90% clay. For our first year we wound up very lucky. I am not sure how anything grew, but it did. We amended each bed with peat, compost and sand this year in an attempt to break up the clay and improve drainage. I think we used 2-3 50lb bags per 4x10' bed. I think our beds at this point are about 15" deep. The original structures were built 12" deep but we raised them another level this year, but did not fill them all the way since the soil seems to be more costly than the materials to build the bed itself. We are hoping as the years go by to fill them slowly with our own compost, but that will take some time.

Also, I think someone else mentioned this already, but look for places that sell bulk soil. We tried amending bag by bag and wasted a ton of money doing so. I was thrilled , but kicking myself when I found a place a few miles away that sold compost by the yard for $32. (Approx enough to fill the bed of Ranger pickup)

SOIL QUESTION:

I added the soil mix, a layer at a time. I watered after each later. I then watered a bit extra when all the soil was in the bed. Now what?

How many more days should I water the soil before I plant? And should I be mixing the soil after future watering?

Thanks

Like I said above, "you fill and mix and water and mix it again and water some more and then add more filler in layers as needed to bring the bed up to the top of the box, mix and water it well. THEN you plant."

So yeah, you mix as you water. You want it all mixed well and the water evenly distributed so there are no dry pockets. Once you are sure it is all mixed well and there are no dry pockets of fill then wait a couple of days for it to settle and plant. Once it is planted it would be difficult to do any mixing without disturbing the plants so that's why it needs to be done before planting.

Dave

Great Dave, that's what I've done. Thank you. One thing I realized I didn't do though - I didn't use any weed cloth. I dug out my grass, added newspaper and filled the box. I planned (but forgot) to put down a type of weed cloth near the top of the soil. Would you suggest I pull off a slight layer of soil and put down the cloth now?

I got the square foot Gardner. Book and am enjoying the education. So far it is talking about distance required between plants, but I haven't yet gotten to the chapter explaining how far apart each different type of plant should be spaced - is there any article on this forum I could reference? Or do you have any suggestions for peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, sugar snap peas?

As I recall, Mel calls for one pepper or tomato plant per square foot; 2 cucumbers per sf and 8 sugar snap plants per sf. (I tend to plant them a just a bit closer than that, but not much).

The 1 tomato per square foot only works if you do serious pruning to one stem. It depends on what variety of tomatoes you are planting; full size indeterminates will take a lot more room than that (at least 4 squares, or even more) if you aren't going to prune. I put my tomatoes in a separate garden from my SFG area, since I don't prune heavily.

Peas are indeed 8 per square (2 rows of 4), Cukes are 2 per (I grow mine up a tomato cage wrapped in twine), and 1 pepper per square works fine.

There are tons of SFG forums, both on this site and elsewhere, that will give you lots of information on planting. Read your book, then search to find lots more information.

Sq. Foot Gardening has its own forum here. Sq. Foot gardening forum

Lots of info there but do keep in mind that it is just one possible method of gardening, it has its own learning curve in addition to just learning the basics of regular gardening, and it has its limitations. Spacing used in SFG all depends on the varieties used with many things. Indeterminate variety tomatoes will require more sq. feet than determinate varieties and will require heavy pruning to fit and produce. Smaller pepper varieties do ok in 1 square but the larger bell pepper varieties often need 2 sqs. Many things require trellising to work in such limited space.

<One thing I realized I didn't do though - I didn't use any weed cloth. I dug out my grass, added newspaper and filled the box. I planned (but forgot) to put down a type of weed cloth near the top of the soil. >

Weed barrier goes on the bottom of the box if you are going to use it for some reason. It normally isn't needed or recommended with raised beds because it creates drainage problems. But either way it doesn't go on or near the top. Doing that would only make planting and fertilizing more difficult so I'm not sure what you were planning there. After planting, mulch goes on the top of the soil around the plants.

Dave

Melfield & Kathy - thank you for your posts and for helping.

Dave, I used newspaper on the bottom of this garden; hopefully that helps with the weeds. A friend recommended the weed barrier on top and to then just cut holes when planting as he says there may be weed seeds in his topsoil. In any event, it won't be the case did me this year. With the peat I used, is mulch also needed on top for moisture or just to help prevent weeds? I didnt purchase nukch, but i can. Thanks.