How To Recharge Your Raised Bed Soil - Keep Your Raised Beds Healthy!

Welcome to the Simple Garden Life podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun, and always rewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
jam and Mary Competti. Hello and welcome everybody to Simple Garden Life Season
three. I'm here with my co host and wife, Mary Competti. And
Mary, can you believe we've been doing this now for three years? No,
it's hard to believe. And I can't believe that we're actually back for
a new season this year. I know it's been a long winner. We're
still in winner I guess February. But you know, we've got lost to
talk about this season. A lot of great episodes on the horizon, starting
with today's about raised beds soil. You know, raised beds great way for
a lot of people to grow. We get a lot of questions on them,
especially about how to maintain them and how to keep them productive year after
year. So to get today it'll be really great to cover that subject.
Yeah, we have a lot of things to cover, but before we start,
we need to kind of back up a little bit and tell everybody what
we've been doing since last seasons. Yeah, we really do. You know.
Of course, we moved to the new forum in well, I guess
early twenty twenty one, and then spent all of last year building the new
farm in twenty twenty two, which culminated in our oldest daughter's wedding at the
farm last September. What a year it was, it was. It was
a whirlwind and a blur to be off, that's right. But you know,
we have the gardens all set this year, and actually before we get
into today's podcast, we have a lot of exciting things coming up at the
farm that we're going to start and we'll tell you about it as the year
goes on. You know, we built some guest cabins there, we have
the ability now to host some classes. We'll be doing that in the future.
And we're really excited about the new test garden we built there. So
a lot of that coming up this year. But I mean, boy,
you can't ask for anything else better than a new garden season for all of
us to start, to get ready and to enjoy. As always, if
you have any questions at all, email us at the farm at owgarden dot
com and you can always set up to follow the podcast at simple garden Life
dot com. You can follow along on Facebook. Two you'll see the Facebook
tab there, or go to Facebook and Simple Garden Life. You'll get all
the latest episodes plus all of our garden article postings. Really great to have
for some great information, right and I think a lot of people also to
follow us on their favorite podcast apps, so you know, iTunes, any
of those apps that you have, Spotify, you know we're on all those.
Look for Simple Garden Life and you can listen to us a couple of
times a month, that's right, A new episode drops every two weeks.
In between, we have garden articles and newsletters that go out three times a
week, which is great information for gardeners. So with that said, I
think we've covered all of our bases. Let's get to those raised beds.
You know, we talked about it. It's really one of the easiest ways,
most effective ways to grow vegetables, flowers, and herbs, especially for
those who might not have the space or have some limited abilities, or if
you just want to grow extra I mean, we have raised beds right up
around our house. Now. It's a great way for you, i know,
to go out if you're cooking in the kitchen, to get all kinds
of herbs and vegetables close by right and I love having that right outside of
our kitchen door. You know, like I said, I can just walk
outside, I can pick them, cut them adam into a cooking. But
I think before we really get started GYM, we really need to talk about
what a raised bed is, because we do have a book calls raised road
gardening, and I don't want people to be confused between the two. That's
true, and they're both great ways to grow. Raised road guarding is more
in place of traditional guarding. If you have that big garden space, it's
a great way to garden without weeds, without tilling. Raised beds, however,
are growing in confined spaces, whether it's wood, metal, stone,
or just you know in the backyard. A lot of times when people will
have elevated raised beds, this is soil that is stationary, so you know,
it's not out where you can often get to it and work it like
you can something else. And that's why it takes a little special care.
You know, with good drainage and great soil, raised beds are an amazing
way to grow. But and this is a big button. You have to
maintain that soil carefully, and you have to maintain it properly, because if
not and it doesn't have good drainage, or if you don't keep repowering that
soil, you know you're not going to get those same results. And honestly,
that leads us kind of to our first question of the week for this
year's season, and it really starts off the season. I love this question
because I think we probably get this twenty times a week from now until the
end of the fall. Of this question about raised beds. Right, we
get a lot of emails every day and asking us different questions about gardening,
and we like to highlight one on the podcast every time we do a podcast.
So this one comes from Mindy from South Haven, Mississippi. She send
us an email and asked this question. I put in raised beds three years
ago and had amazing results for the first two years, but last year my
plans were weak and I got very few vegetables. What can I do to
make sure that this doesn't happen again this year? I mean, this is
the question, and this is really the entire juxta the podcast. So normally,
Mindy, I would answer your question and well, kind of short terms,
right, a few sentences, maybe maybe ten minutes, but today,
Really, this entire broadcast is going to answer that question. And you know,
it's really comes down to this, and this is why people write to
us all the time and say, work great, year one and sometimes I
even got year two in it. Because that soil in those beds over time
gets depleted very quickly from resources. And there's other things Mary that you can
do that can harm or I say that are done that sometimes harm that soil
as well. Right off the bat, you know, I can say at
the end of the year, one of the quickest things is not taking your
plants out from that year and letting them hang out there all winter. Yeah,
a lot of people make the mistake of keeping their old spent plants in
the ground until winner's over and then they try and start again in the sprain.
That's really detrimental to the soil itself, it is, and it just
leads to all kinds of issues. Pests can get a better grip, disease
can get a better grip. We talk about crops like tomatoes that can carry
blight. The more you leave those plants in, the longer they stay in
that soil, the more bad things that are going to happen. Then also
in the fall if you haven't covered your soil. Think about this, that
soil that's exposed out there, if it's just bare dirt, it's getting winners,
rains, the ice, the snow, the melt off, all of
those nutrients can leach out when that happens. Not to mention, they're getting
the weed seeds they get blown in there every year too. You know,
that's probably the biggest thing of all is you get a lot of weed seeds
that come in. And then finally the other thing with raised beds, that
is often a problem. And I don't know if this is the case for
you, Mindy when you write your question, but if you grow the same
crops in their year after year without adjusting the soil, even with adjusting the
soil, chances are they're not going to produce as good in the year three,
four or five and down the road. And why is that? While
it's playing and simple, it's the same reason we rotate crops in our garden
or any situation, because you know a specific vegetable is going to use a
specific resource or set of resources from the garden, and the longer you grow
it in there, the more it's going to take out of it. If
those aren't replenished, you know, bad things are going to happen. And
then the same thing, pests are driven to the same area, and if
you're growing that same crop, those pests are going to keep attacking. Absolutely.
And you know, I like the analogy of running a marathon, and
of course I don't ever run a marathon, but we do at the farm
every day. But if you run a marathon and you finish it and you
get your medal when you're finished, you're not to run a marathon again right
after that or the next day, or even possibly the next year. You
have to refuel your body. You need to feed it, you need to
get nourishments, you need to get fluids. Same things goes with the raised
beds. Yeah, and so let's take this right now from to the next
step. You know, we've talked about it. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter
if you're growing flowers or vegetable plants, even herbs. They take nutrients from
the soil, and because the raised beds have no ability to replenish them,
that soil can really become sterile. That's a really good word to use.
Very quickly as all the nutrients leave and Unfortunately, depending on what you grow,
it can happen fast. High yield crops and crops that take a lot
of nutrients such as tomatoes, cucumbers, even corn, those can really rob
the nutrients from soil pretty quickly, in as little as one year. The
second year you can notice a drop off. Sometimes after two years you really
notice it. But you're also going to notice it if you're growing flowers or
herbs, you're not going to see the same results that soil. You'll know
what I'm talking about. If you have these beds that soil starts to become
almost sandy, and some people think, oh, that's good, it's getting
looser. That's not there's no structure to that soil, right, Soil actually
gets very dry and crumbly, and you really need to feed the soil.
And we'll get into that and this we talk about what you can do for
your raised beds. Yeah, and we touched on this a little bit.
That soil becomes, you know, an inviting home for past and disease.
And so it really comes down to, Okay, we've covered all the reasons
why it might not be working, but okay, how do you how do
you make up better? How do I have this raised bed or three raised
beds in my backyard? Do I need to dig all that soil out?
You know, some raised beds very can be two three feet deep of soil,
which is great. Some can be twelve inches. That's a lot of
work if you have to take that out, right, But we have some
better answers, I think, and we'll go over those in just a few
minutes. That's right. We'll take a quick break here for an ad that
helps pay for the podcast, and we'll be back right after this to finish
off and explain how you can recharge your raised beds this year. And we
are back talking about raised beds, and we covered why the soil loses its
deficiencies marry and why things can happen. And now I think it's really time
to look at Okay, how do you correct? How do you make that
soil strong and healthy year after year? Right? For those of you that
have a raised bed in your backyard, your front yard, in your flower
beds, this is what you've been waiting for. This is the answer and
how to make that so happen. Be happy for this year's garden. It's
right. So it's you know, February now. So if you're heading into
the year, you might think, Okay, what can I do right now?
But I just want to take one quick step back first in the future.
One of the best things you can do every single year is to put
a cover crop in your raised beds. And yes, you can do this.
It's not people think of cover crops. It's big farm fields are big
vegetable gardens. But all a cover crop is a crop that is planted for
the sole benefit to provide all of its power back to the soil. And
when raised beds, you can use smaller crops. Oats are one of my
favorite for raised beds. They germinate fast, They germinate in cold weather.
They also die off with the freeze, so you plant them in the fall
and as soon as that fills in thick and it freezes and kills it off,
it still stay on top of that soil to protect that. We talk
about covering the soil, but more importantly, what oats do as a lagoon
they actually feed the soil, and not just with as they decompose, but
they fix nitrogen levels in the soil with their roots. It's a great cover
crop to grow and we'll touch on this in a second. I know I
talked about fall, but you can actually plant those in the spring too,
or some other crops. Another great cover crop for raised beds are peas.
Peas, believe it or not, do the same thing. There are another
lagoon that can actually help fix the nitrogen in the soil. And more importantly,
they again add greenery when they're cut down and dug in. I say
till that's a bad word, dug into the soil. Raised beds are kind
of easy to do that. So you can do a cover crop in the
spring and you don't have to wait for it to always die off. You
can just turn it over and you're ready to go, right. I think
a lot of people have the misconception if you have a raised bed, you
can't use a cover crop, and we're here to tell you, yes,
you can. Actually it's in a very important, great way to add nutrients
to your soil and to protect your soil when you're long. Yeah, we'll
have a video coming out here in the next few weeks on our YouTube channel
of our beds and our test gardens and our raised beds right now are sitting
under a coat of oats from last fall. And there. It's great.
I mean they filled in quick and again you can do that. So it's
our raised rows, you know, with whether we use annual rye clover,
you name it. It's just a great way to actually add energy to the
you know, to the raised bed soil. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned
that we do have a YouTube channel that has all sorts of things on it
from gardening to our diy to our house build, our barn build. So
maybe we should give them that that YouTube channel information. Yeah, it'll be
on there. It'll be on the article here at the end as always on
the resources at the end of the tab. But you can look up Old
World Garden you'll find it there on YouTube as well. So getting back to
us, so we talked about the cover crop. So just you know,
when can you plan a cover crop, well with oats or peas as soon
as the soil warms enough and the temperatures allow for germination, which for oats
forty to forty five degrees standard daytime, you want to wait a little,
you know, probably like for us here in Ohio, we're we could plant
that in March if we wanted to. But if you really don't want to
mess with that in the spring. That's fine. That's just something to remember,
definitely for a fall cover crop, for sure. I'll tell you king
of everything is compost. Compost is the one thing we talk about it so
many times. We have great podcast on compost, a couple of them on
different ways. But compost is full of absolutely everything your plants can need.
That's fine. They call it black holes. That's right, It's exactly right.
And when you put compost into your raised beds, you are rebuilding that
those nutrients there and not just rebuilding the nutrients. This is where it really
makes sense. It helps build soil structure. What is going to get rid
of that sandy field or the clay field if you have bad soil. But
more importantly it also, you know, is the nutrients in the form that
plants can take up quickly. You know, you can put power in the
soil and it might not be able to be absorbed. Compost is absorbed quickly.
It helps hold moisture, which can be huge for raised beds around around
roots, but it also drains excess moisture. It's almost miracle and of itself,
right, And I think you know a lot of people have the misconceptions
as well of putting making their own composts. I know a lot of us
do make our own compost, and you know gardeners love it. But what
do you do if you don't have your own composts? Absolutely, there's great
you know, we have resources on earth site where you can order compost online.
There's lots of companies that cor it locally. Just go locally. You're
going to find local places with either bag compost or you can get it in
bulk. You don't always have to make it. Some people that small areas
can't make that compost, but that doesn't mean you can't get a hold of
it. The important thing is is to get it in there. And people
say, well, what if my raised beds are full, how do I
add it? Well, you know, here's the thing. Compost will break
down. So for me, I we like to add a couple inches of
composts on our raised beds every year, and there's enough soil that is broken
down by that time to do that. But if your soil is absolutely horrible,
take some of that old soil out. If you do have a compost
pile, go throw that soil in there and let it recharge and then fill
the rest with composts. But I'm telling you it is the single best way
to rebuild how much you know, I'm gonna tell you what, if you
have a three by three square raised bed and you're trying to grow in that
area, you know, a good two to three five gallon buckets toil compost
is probably what you should be putting in there every year to help recharge that
soil. And you know, you can kind of extrap light from there what
you're gonna need if you have bigger sizes or less. But compost is really
vital to rebuild raised bass, right, And don't get caught up on the
exact measurement of how many inches or how many buckets you do. Salmon is
better than none, exactly exactly. So that's the best. Okay, some
other things that are fantastic. This is the one that people forget about a
lot is man when you mow your yard, as long as you're not using
a yard treatment type of you know chemical that those green grass clippings are gold
for that soil. Take those over, put them on top, actually scratch
the dirt a little, get them underneath the soil. They're going to rot
away. Quickly. But what they're gonna do is just like compost, they're
going to give you a better structure to the soil. Green Grass actually has
nitrogen in it. It's going to help get into the soil. Same thing
goes marry, another great one that people have all over the place, or
leaves and leaves right, and then the key here is shredded leaves. You
really don't want to put whole leaves into your raised beds. It's just not
going to break down fast enough forget to get the nutrients. So it's the
shredded part that's real important. Yeah, and the finder the shred the better.
If you have a lawnmower with a bagger, take it over there,
push it over right away, and push it over them and get them shredded
up and again dig them into the soil. The more organic materials you can
put in your beds. And these are things you can do all throughout the
year. I want to stress that you know, you plant your garden in
the spring, your raise bed and you mow your crass. Take those clippings
and put them around the top. You don't aways have to dig them in
the soil. They're going to break down over time. Same thing with leaves.
They you know, add those materials throughout the year. And I think
the important thing is here is you know, do not add them if you're
adding a bunch of chemicals to your lawns, make it bright green in the
summertime. And the other thing is if you have a lot of weed seeds
in your grass, dandelions are now puffed up in the puff balls and clover
seeding, you know, don't use those, But you can use other weaves
that have not gone to seed at that point, and you can still put
them into into your raised bed soil. Absolutely. So the next thing I
want to go is a couple of additives you can put in. And these
don't have to be put in the levels of ingredients that we're talking about with
compost or grass clippings, but they should be put in to really help.
One of the best of all We talk about it all the time wormcastings.
You just can't beat wormcastings. Much like compost. They can fertilize plants,
they can help absorb water, they can shed excess water. They're absolutely phenomenal.
So yes, you can put some over the top of soil and dig
them in. But what I really like to do is use those a little
more sparingly. Whatever I'm planting at that time, I'm putting a half a
cup or a quarter cup of wormcastings into every hole. If it's a tomato
or a cucumber, let's explain what wormcastings are. I'll let you handle that
one. So basically, wormcastings are the excretions of worms. So basically,
to put it bluntly, it's worm pooling. It's right, it is,
But man, is it effective and it's dried. I mean, this is
not stuff that smells. It's not like a typical manure you think of.
It's phenomenal though for plants we talk about it all the time. Again,
I think we have another podcast dedicated to that on Simple Garden Life, and
you can just you see the difference when you plant plants with wormcasting. So
a great one to do now if you're a big tomato planner, if you
like planting cucumbers or any vegetables. Another great thing to use our egg shells.
You know, egg shells provide so many nutrients to the soil, but
most importantly calcium, which is huge for tomatoes and not helping with helping defend
against black rot and end rot, but also in stem development of all vegetables.
They take that calcium up early on, and if they can't get sturdy
stems, the vegetable plant doesn't grow as well. But it's how you add
those shells we talk about. Can you crush them up? Yes, you
can crush them up and put them in planning holes, but really pulverize them.
We like to use an old coffee grind or and pulverize our shells and
then put that dust almost into the powder. It's much quicker to absorb.
You know, with the cost of eggs. Right now, this is a
very valuable product and you don't want to waste those egg shells. Don't throw
them away or I know you could put them in your compost, but save
them, pulverize them, put them down to grind them up very small,
and then you can put that into your soil raise bed soil to help you
know. You're absolutely right. We just talk about this is a free product
and it's really not. I guess it's a free byproduct. But grab your
neighbors eggshells if they still have them, and pulverize those down. Get as
many as you can or head to the local breakfast cafe and ask them what
they do with their egg shells. A lot of them will be happy to
save them for you. Absolutely so. And then, okay, another key
ingredient that I just think is forgotten when it comes to raise bed and container
guarding, and that's perlite or vermiculite. Okay, so perlite, they're very
similar materials. Perlite is basically volcanic glass that's heat it up really high and
then explodes like popcorn. It says little white things you see in potting soil,
a lot that everybody thinks styrofoam and they think they're evil, and they're
not. It's one hundred percent organic. And here's the beauty of perlite.
It never breaks down. So when it's in the soil, what does it
do well? It lightens the soil, It keeps it from compacting, It
helps drainage. It helps everything from your roots not getting compacted to keeping the
soil from allowing water to drain through it. And very few people put pearlite
in the raised beds. And we swear by it. I mean we put
a large you know again for a three by six or raised beds, I
would say we put two five gallon buckets in there and dig that into the
soil. Right and anyone that has went out and bought or purchased a tomato
plant or any type of plant from a local nursery, when you pull that
out to repot it, you're going to see those little white specks everywhere.
That's why they use it. It helps with the drainage, it helps for
your plants, it helps revitalize your soul. And it is organic, organic,
without a doubt. It's not. We get that question every year.
I don't want to put these I thought, you see starf oh man,
this is gonna be bad for my plants. It's not. Trust me.
And like I said, perlite or vermiculates another great option, same thing,
organic substance. It can do that. Okay, So finally there's one more
that we want to talk about that can really help, especially if you happen
to raise chickens or rabbits or goats or might have you know, a cow
or two in your backyard. But that's aged manure and marry. What's the
keyword there? Age? You got it? You know. I don't think
your neighbors or even maybe your spouse or your children are gonna like when you
throw fresh maneure on your raised beds, because they're gonna it's gonna smell like
you put fresh maneuver. But what we're talking about is manure that has dried
aged. You can buy bagged age maneure if you don't have your own,
that is great to put on early early in the year. You don't want
to be putting this on right before you're planning or during your planning, because
it can contain some pathogens and it needs time to break down. But for
us, you know, we usually put a couple inches of our chicken maneure
on ours in the fall or early early spring, actually I would call it
winter late winter, February March. Dig it into the soil and you know,
completely decomposes and everything's good to go. But talk about rich and nutrients
and talking about help to build the raised bed soil age maneures a really big
key. It has been vital for the success of our garden and I would
highly recommend it. If you live in the city or you're doing a raised
bed on your back patio, you may have to go purchase it, but
if not, go off find a farmer, find some of the has chickens
and see if you can't help them clean up their manure. Yeah, I
think so. And you know what we're that's kind of the materials that we
talk about here from an organic standpoint that can really work. But I kind
of want to stress before we end today that you don't have to put all
these I can see the person right now going out and I've got to click
this witch's brew of materials and put it in. What we're trying to say
is, you know, it's all about being natural and trying to get the
things that you have on hand or that are easily accessible to build your soil.
What you don't want to do is the famous do nothing. If you
do nothing, your plants will do nothing if you do nothing, expect nothing.
That's exactly right. So take one, two, three of these and
then whatever you do this fall, get a raised you know, get some
cover crops in there and get them on top, and then continue to build
soil. Finally, last but not least, we talked about composts and how
it can build. You know, another thing great thing to do is you
have banana peels coming out of your kitchen, you have some coffee grounds coming
out of your kitchen every morning. Great thing to go out there and dig
into the soil of your raised beds here and there and just keep putting the
brown as they break down. Another great way to build nutrient st Yeah.
Just remember they've spent coffee groundens and ones that that's right. So wow,
I can't believe it. So season three here, we're so excited. Like
I said, we'll have a new podcast every other Tuesday, um, and
we'll drop that. You can always find all of the episodes on Simple Gardenlife
dot com um. And again, we also have a tab on our Old
World Garden Farm site if you saw if you follow us there or on our
this is my garden garden site. So we love the garden knowledge and love
the farm. And like I said, stay tuned in the coming weeks on
the websites and also here while some exciting news about the farm and and some
some great things going on there. Just to recap today, I think,
Mary, we talked about raised beds, and what's important, I think more
than anything else, is that you can't allow that soil to stay to stay
by itself, yeah, and stagnant for more than you know, a year.
It's going to have to be rebuilt. And the best way to do
that is, you know, cover crops in the fall if you can,
and then using compost or all the other ingredients we talked about today to put
into that solo to keep them going. So, Mendy, I hope I
answered your question. I know it was a little longer than normal. It
wasn't a quick one. But it's important to be able to build that soil.
And I'll tell you the great thing about a raised beds. You can
do that this spring and your beds are gonna be right back at it.
It's not something like a big garden space where it can take some years to
rebuild. Show you know your soil, you can put those ingredients in and
you can get growing again. Yeah, a lot of time will go a
long way. That's right. That's right. So well, Mary, I
guess it's it's that time to say goodbye for this week, you know,
right, and remember whatever you do, find the fun and gardening and grow
something beautiful. Until next week. Everyone, happy gardening. We hope you've
enjoyed this episode. Subscribe to the Simple Garden podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, or most of your favorite podcast apps. You can also head
over to simple gardenlife dot com where you can listen and read all of the
show notes to every episode and if you have any questions, any ideas for
show topics, or if you want to share your favorite garden tip, email
us at the farm at owgarden dot com. Until next time, Thanks everyone,