Greenhouse manager Mike Barron talks about raised beds at Crabtree Farms.BUILDING A PLANT BED• Use a rot-resistant material such as stone, concrete blocks, cedar, redwood, woods treated with boric acid or composite board.• Use corrosion-resistant nails and screws.• Overbuild because you can’t move it once it’s built.• Beds usually are open on the bottom unless there is concern about the native soil.• Beds with a bottom should be at least 2 feet deep, while an open-bottomed bed generally is 11 inches deep.• Use a 50-50 mixture of topsoil and compost.
Clifford Ackerson recently built his first set of raised garden beds.
“It’s not difficult,” said Ackerson, a civil engineer. “You just have to stay with it.”
Ackerson and his wife had tried planting in their 25-square-foot yard on Belvoir Avenue but found themselves overwhelmed by weeds.
“It just became a plot of Bermuda grass,” he said. “The raised beds were our best shot because it gets us up out of the weeds.”