How to Maintain and Replenish Your Raised Garden Beds

Introduction

Raised garden beds provide several practical advantages for all gardeners, including enhanced control over your plants’ growing conditions, improved drainage, and better accessibility for planting and maintenance. However, as with any permanent garden feature, they also demand specific care to ensure the health of your plants and durability of the structure. At Lyngso, we understand that maintaining your raised beds can be challenging due to issues like soil depletion or the deterioration of the bed structure itself. In this guide, we will cover the essential aspects of raised bed maintenance, including best practices, key maintenance activities, and essential tips for preserving and maintaining soil health in raised beds.

Pro Tip: Boost Nutrient Absorption With Essential Minerals

Mineral-based amendments include lime, sulfur, Azomite, rock dust, rock phosphate, langbeinite, greensand, gypsum, vermiculite, perlite, biochar, and basalt. These amendments can adjust soil pH, provide essential elements, and trace minerals, or serve as lightweight media in soilless mixes. However, mineral amendments that supply nutrients to plants rely on soil biology to convert those elements into forms plants can absorb.

Certain mineral amendments, like lime and sulfur, are specifically used to adjust pH, while others, such as gypsum, help balance sodic soils. Keep in mind that while gypsum can temporarily improve clay soil structure, long-term improvement requires the addition of organic matter.

It’s crucial to test your soil with a lab before adding mineral amendments. For example, in California, where soils tend to be alkaline, adding lime could further raise the soil’s pH to levels that harm plant health. Always test your soil first to avoid unintended issues.

Do Raised Garden Beds Require Maintenance?

Yes, raised garden beds do require maintenance to ensure both the health of your plants, soil, and the longevity of the bed itself.

Thanks to their elevated design, raised garden beds offer benefits like improved soil quality and better drainage, making planting and garden management easier. However, these advantages also require specific care. Regular soil management is essential for maintaining soil fertility, and proper watering techniques are important, as raised beds can dry out quickly. Seasonal maintenance tasks, such as preparing the beds in spring and planting cover crops during fall are also key for extending their lifespan.

5 Essential Maintenance Activities to Keep Your Raised Garden Beds Thriving

#1 Perform Routine Inspections

Developing a maintenance routine is key to simplifying the upkeep of your raised garden beds:

Regular checks are essential to spot damage or decay early on and ensure the longevity of the raised bed. Look for things such as soil compaction, wood rot, pests, structural weaknesses, and weed overgrowth. If the raised beds are constructed from wood do inspect for degradation by fungi or termites. Check to see if the soil has level dropped, if there is a compaction layer in the soil, or gophers or other pests have invaded the bed.

#2 Weed Management

Frequent light weeding helps prevent weeds from establishing and competing with your plants for vital nutrients and water. Consider using natural mulches such as bark or wood chips, which suppress weed growth organically and help retain soil moisture. Do cut back weeds before they flower so they don’t disperse weed seeds into the bed.

#3 Soil Selection and Maintenance

The most important part of a healthy raised garden bed is healthy soil. Fill a new garden bed initially with soil that promotes rapid root growth and has excellent drainage, then replenish nutrients on an annual basis. Essential Soil is a perfect choice for growing in raised garden beds! All soil mixes will need an addition of 1”-2” organic compost or Vegetable Amendment Mix in spring and fall to replace the organic matter that has been digested by the microbes.

#4 Watering

Raised garden beds often require different watering techniques than their ground-level counterparts due to their enhanced drainage properties. Due to quick drying, ensure deep, regular watering to maintain soil moisture. Lateral watering throughout the bed is very important, ensuring water reaches deep down below rather than just a few inches on the top. Ensure the whole bed is getting water, not just isolated areas. Good plant cover or woody mulch will also protect the soil from drying out.

#5 Pest Control

Consistent monitoring for pests is key to maintaining the health of your raised garden beds, and early detection is crucial for effective management and minimizing damage. Use natural and organic methods such as introducing beneficial insects, applying neem oil for pests on leaves and branches in moderation. Healthy plants are more disease and pest resistant, over fertilizing especially with inorganic fertilizers can lead to pest problems.

Soil Maintenance Tips

To maintain the vitality of this living soil, it’s important to either plant densely to cover the soil or add mulch and ensure proper lateral irrigation. Essential Soil cannot sit fallow during the non-growing season; therefore, it’s crucial to plant cover crops during the fall and winter to keep the soil active.

In the spring, before planting your new crops, add an inch of Vegetable Amendment Mix and use the chop and drop method to naturally enrich the soil, cycling the cover crop nutrients back into the ground and preparing it for the upcoming growing season. This approach not only maintains soil health but also reduces the need for additional fertilizers and amendments.

Tips for Maintaining Raised Garden Beds

How Do I Keep My Wood Raised Garden Bed from Rotting?

Ensuring proper drainage and regularly inspecting for and addressing any signs of damage or decay are essential for keeping your raised garden beds from rotting. The material choices are equally important. Opt for durable, naturally rot-resistant woods like cedar or redwood. Alternatively, building raised garden beds out of natural stone using Drystack and Wall Rocks is not only more attractive but also involves less maintenance. Natural stone raised garden beds also last almost forever and the natural stone can always be reused and repurposed!

What’s the Best Way to Maintain Soil Health in Raised Beds?

Choosing the right soil to initially fill your garden beds is an important factor for determining the need for frequent amendments or soil replacements in the future.

For this purpose, we recommend initially filling your raised bed with Essential Soil and/or Lyngso Vegetable Blend. These premium soils are specifically engineered to optimize plant health with their well-balanced mix of drainage, aeration, and nutrient-rich components. Both these soils must be planted all year around and cannot sit fallow over winter.

Do I Need to Replace the Soil in My Raised Planter from Last Year?

You typically don’t need to replace the soil in your raised planter from last year, especially if you initially filled the bed with a high-quality soil like Essential Soil and/or Lyngso Vegetable Blend. However, replenishing the organic matter is key to maintaining soil health due to organic matter being digested by the microbes and used by the plants as nutrients.

For this purpose, we recommend topping off your beds semi-annually (Spring/Fall) with 1” or so of the Vegetable Amendment Mix. If you’re not planting densely, cover the soil with mulch, like Mini Mulch Fir Bark, to retain moisture and suppress weeds.

Alternatively, if you prefer organic compost, we recommend spreading Diestel Compost at 1” depth to enrich the soil. If you don’t need to add additional soil amendment to your garden bed, you can use plant-specific organic fertilizers like Bio-Live to stimulate root growth in new plants, enhance the growth of established ones and to feed the soil microbes.

How Frequently Should Soil Be Replaced in a Raised Garden Bed?

If the soil is maintained seasonally and the garden beds are planted all year long, the soil should rarely ever be replaced.

However, if you’re concerned with diseases, pests, or poor plant performance, consider replacing the soil. If you have used any -cides (pesticide, fungicides, herbicides, etc.), it may have accumulated in your soil. We recommend against the use of any -cides in organic living soil.

Final Thoughts

Proper maintenance of your raised garden beds is essential for ensuring the continued health of your plants and longevity of the raised garden bed. At Lyngso, we provide an extensive selection of tools, soil amendments, organic composts and fertilizers to help you maintain your raised beds effectively, whether you’re aiming to optimize plant and soil health. Visit our display garden and landscaping yard in San Carlos for expert advice and inspiration and contact us today to learn about delivery options for your SF Bay area home.