A Weed Free Raised Bed

To make a weed-free raised bed is fairly simple.

I started out by making the walls of the bed by simply stacking bricks: I used no morter at all.

I then laid down woven weed barrier across the bottom to prevent strong weeds from coming up. It also prevents voles. Voles are REALLY common in Kansas, and they do eat root vegetables!!!!!!!!

I filled the bed up with vermiculite, which raised nasty clouds of white dust that were no doubt very bad for my lungs. I did try to avoid breathing it but I REALLY should have had a dust mask! They are very cheap at the hardware store but it would have meant another trip to town and so I simply tried to avoid the white stuff! I tend to get excited and impatient when a project is very nearly done!

I now had a filled, raised bed but there was no in it fertility at all. So, I dumped little bags of fertilizer on the top, and then I added powdered kelp for trace minerals. I raked it in and watered it down and then I was ready to plant.

The first year I used the raised bed I grew small plants and a few potatos, but the potatos grew over the small plants and killed them.

On the GOOD side, I did not have to dig up the potatos. I simply stuck my hand into the loose vermiculite and took what I wanted. When I decided to remove the potato plants I simply grabbed the stem and pulled them all up. When I removed the plants I did loose a couple of spuds that I had to fish around for but it was BEYOND easy to get the potatos out!

I am now into my second year, and this year I did not plant potatos, instead I planted lettuce, onions, and carrots. I should get a LOT of carrots because I absent mindedly planted carrots TWICE! Since I planted them 1 inche apart on a grid pattern that will give me 144 carrots per square foot. And, I believe that I planted 8 square feet into carrots. That is a lot of carrots, even when you consider that I take every other carrot while they are still small! Baby carrots are excellent!

One mistake that I did make hen I made the raised bed was that the ground was not very level when I stacked the bricks on it. Slanting ground means slanting walls. I had to repair and re-stack a few spots because some of the bricks fell over!

The weather across the United States is sounding pretty grim this year: the states North of me are flooding and the states South of me are afflicted with a drought. If the rest of the country is like this then I may be glad of my bountifull vegetable garden as the price of produce will be going up!