Raised Bed Vegetable Garden Layouts for Beginners (2024)

FAQs

How do you layout a raised garden bed? ›

Allow enough space between beds in your raised-bed garden design. It's tempting to fill the entire space with raised beds, but paths around the outside of your beds will make planting, maintaining, and harvesting your beds easier. The distance between raised beds should be at least 3 feet wide (4 feet is even better).

As a general rule, put tall veggies toward the back of the bed, mid-sized ones in the middle, and smaller plants in the front or as a border. Consider adding pollinator plants to attract beneficial insects that can not only help you get a better harvest, but will also prey on garden pests.

You can grow up to 32 different plants inside your 4' x 8' raised garden bed using “Square Foot Gardening” techniques. There are countless books and online resources available to guide you in this rewarding method of gardening.

Some gardeners chose to implement a barrier at the bottom to keep out pests and weeds. Below are a few materials you can use: Cardboard or newspaper: Cardboard is a great option if you are on a budget. You can line the bottom of your raised garden bed with cardboard and newspaper to deter pests and weeds.

Using square foot gardening, you can comfortably grow two cucumber plants per square foot.

Square foot gardening is an efficient and space-saving technique that involves dividing your garden into small, manageable squares. Each square is typically one foot by one foot and is planted with a specific number of plants depending on their size.

The traditional basic vegetable garden design has been straight and long rows running from north to south. Usually anything growing tall, like corn, beans or peas are planted on the north side of the vegetable garden to keep them from casting shade on the shorter crops.

Tomatoes and cucumbers can be grown together successfully, and there are actually some benefits to planting them together. Both plants have similar growing needs when it comes to sunlight, soil conditions, and watering. And if space is at a premium, interplanting the two will allow you to get more out of your garden.

What is the spacing for tomato plants in a raised bed? ›

If you're planting more intensively in the ground, not in rows, follow the 18-24 inches guide throughout, but consider how you will reach the plants without trampling them. In Raised Beds: Guidance for planting in raised beds is similar to planting intensively in the ground, following the 18-24 guide.

Some perennials that grow well in raised beds include daylilies, lavender, oregano, rhubarb, raspberries, and hostas. Just know that if you plant these in your bed, they'll continue to occupy that space for quite a while (unless you decide to pull them, of course!).

Seed packet instructions and the experts all tell us that plants need appropriate space if we want the best growing results. Well, I'm going to debunk this myth and blow it right out of the raised garden bed for good and say crowding your vegetables together is not only safe to do but it might actually be better!

While many people grow both tomatoes and carrots in the same garden beds, alongside one another, quite successfully, there is no real evidence that either plant does better in the same neighbourhood.

Whether deep or shallow, raised beds give a gardener a way to create ideal soil conditions on an even larger scale. While potting mix alone is too light for use in raised beds, creating a 50:50 blend of potting mix and Miracle-Gro® All Purpose Garden Soil will give just the right balance.