Creating or making a garden bed is essentially the foundation of your entire garden. You have come up with an overall vision of your garden but the first step in making it a reality is creating a garden bed.

The depth and to a lesser degree width of a bed should be determined by the types of plants you’ll be growing there. Also, doing a raised bed will allow you more depth by adding soil on top of the ground. In general you want to go at least a foot down. If you dig down a foot and then do a raised bed you should have plenty of space for any roots. Width in general should be 3-4 feet which will allow you to access the full width of the bed from either side without straining.

The best way to go about creating the bed is to shovel dirt out onto a hand sifter. This will catch any rocks or other objects in the soil that might interfere with vegetables like carrots or beets. The sifted soil should be placed back into place as you move down the length of the bed. It’s easiest to dig out some dirt when you start so you have a place to put the sifted dirt as you move and come back for that spot at the end.

Your bed should be taking shape now. If you decide to do a raised bed (adding soil so you bed is a couple feet above ground level) step along the edges of your bed to define the bed area. When not doing raised beds you might want to consider some other form of identifying the edges. Branches from trees, rocks, etc can be used. This will essentially “claim” an area as your garden bed that you know should be free from weeds and good viable soil.

Paths between beds should be kept clear of all vegetation. Pests such as slugs hide or nest in this vegetation and therefore have easy access to your plants. You can use wood chips, burlap, rock, etc to keep vegetation at a minimum.

Now that you’ve cleared your bed of any obstructions, loosened the soil, and mixed it let’s move on to Garden Bed Preparation of Soil / Organic Soil Preparation.