Some of the Easiest Vegetables to Grow in Raised Garden Beds

Some of the Easiest Veggies to Grow in Raised Garden-Beds

Raised Garden Beds offer some great advantages for growing vegetables. First of all, the soil can be catered to the your specific needs, and is then protected by walls, which means it won’t be quickly stepped on and compacted. The beds provide good drainage and fewer problems with invasive weeds. Lastly, the soil in raised beds will warm more quickly in the spring, providing a longer growing season. Although almost any vegetable can be grown in raised beds, here is a list some of the easiest veggies to grow in raised garden-beds:

Some of the Easiest Veggies to Grow in Raised Garden-Beds1. Root Vegetables

When you’re growing plants for their roots, it’s important to have complete control over the soil. Raised beds can be filled with the perfect soil to suit your needs; free of rocks, clay and debris that could hinder the growth of roots or cause misshapen veggies. Carrots, beets, radishes and parsnips flourish in the loose, rock-free soil where they have space to spread out.

2. Leafy greens

Greens such as lettuce, spinach and kale perform marvelously in raised beds. These cool-weather crops need to be planted just as soon as you can get a trowel into your soil. The fact that soil in raised beds warms more quickly than the ground means you can get started earlier and get several great harvests before summer hits. Leafy greens also despise soggy roots, so your bed’s fast draining soil means your lovely lettuces will never have to stand in the water for too long.

4. Tomatoes

The many varieties of tomatoes are some of the most popular vegetables to grow in a home garden in Canada, including both determinate and indeterminate types. For indeterminate varieties, the ideal thing would be to plant them next to a good trellis. They are heavy feeders that need nutrient-dense soil to thrive, so you’ll want to customize this soil to have extra compost, or a good organic fertilizer. (see our article on “How to Fertilize Tomatoes”)

3. Onions

There are three reasons that onions are the perfect vegetable to grow in raised beds: They love quick-draining soil, they need plenty of organic matter, and they require a long growing season. By nature, the soil in raised beds can be catered to your needs, so if you know you’ll be planting onions in the bed, you should be sure to incorporate plenty of compost. Onions grown from seeds can take over 100 days to reach maturity. If you live anywhere with four seasons, you’ll want to give these babies the longest time in the garden you can manage. The warmer soil in a raised bed gives your onions a head start!

5. Potatoes

Potatoes not only grow well in a raised bed, they are also much easier to harvest this way. These plants benefit from hilling soil around the shoots as they grow. In a raised bed you can easily contain your hills. Potatoes need loose, loamy soil that drains well. They grow best when they are able to easily spread out in the soil, and this loose soil will keep them from rotting. Potato crops grown in raised beds tend to have higher yields with bigger tubers.

While these are some of the easiest veggies to grow in raised garden-beds, with careful planning you can also have success with growing vining crops vertically on trellises. Now that you know what your raised bed is capable of, get out there and start growing!

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