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In recent years, planting vegetables in raised beds has become especially popular among gardeners. Growing vegetables in raised garden beds can be fun. However, some are easier than others to grow, so it’s important to know what works for you. This is especially true if you’re a beginner gardener since the last thing you’d want is to end up with some of the toughest plants to grow.
If you’re one of those people who are interested in growing vegetables in a raised garden bed, but you’re not sure which type to start with, we’ve got you covered. In this article, we’ve rounded up a list of some of the best vegetables you can grow in your own raised garden bed. Let’s take a look!
Best Vegetables for a Raised Garden Bed
There are hundreds of types of vegetables that you can grow in raised garden beds, including the following:
Root vegetables
Root vegetables grow in loose, rock-free soil and require a lot of space as they get larger and their roots spread out. They’re an excellent option for raised garden beds which give them exactly that: enough soil space to grow in. Here are some easy and delicious root vegetables for your raised garden beds.
- Carrots – Carrots grow well in raised garden beds and you can plant about twenty per square foot of space.
- Radish: Radish is one of the fastest and most convenient vegetables to grow in raised garden beds. They’ll be ready to harvest in about 35 to 60 days.
- Beets: Fast-growing beets can be ready to eat in about 60 days at the most. They require little space, so you can plant them with a space of 6 to 10 cm between them and at a depth of more than 7 cm. You need to make sure that your bed is at least 30 cm deep so that your beets will have enough room to grow. Water your beets well and if you want them sweeter and tastier, pick them before they fully mature.
- Potatoes: Potatoes not only grow well in a raised bed but are also much easier to harvest. They require a lot of space for the roots to spread easily in the soil. Potato crops grown in long beds are more productive with larger tubers.
Leafy Greens
Leafy greens include lettuce, spinach, kale, and cabbage, all of which grow excellently in raised garden beds. Since raised beds warm up a lot more quickly than normal ground beds, remember to plant your leafy greens as soon as you can in order to get several harvests before summer. This is because leafy greens are cool-weather crops and won’t grow well in the warmth of summer.
- Spinach: Spinach can be grown near lettuce and radishes without any problems. Under the right conditions, it germinates within a week.
- Lettuce: Lettuce loves the soil structure of raised garden beds and is an easy plant to grow since it requires minimal feeds. However, lettuce does require a lot of water and sunlight, so make sure your beds are in a bright, sunny area.
Bulb Vegetables
Some popular examples of bulb vegetables include onions, garlic, and leeks. Bulb vegetables love fast soil drainage and need a lot of organic matter, making them an ideal choice for raised garden beds. However, they do take a long time to grow so you might not want to devote the entire bed space to grow them. Use a small part of the bed for growing onions and you can plant other vegetables in other parts of the bed.
Garlic requires loose and soft soil, so be sure to add a lot of compost. Divide the garlic root into separate cloves and plant them in holes about 2.5 cm deep. If the winters in your area are colder, you can plant the garlic cloves deeper in the ground.
Tomatoes
Although we’ve added tomatoes to this list, they’re more of a fruit than a vegetable. Tomatoes need nutrient-rich soil to grow and do well in raised garden beds. The only disadvantage of growing tomatoes in long beds is that the roots could get easily loosened in the soil and the plants can bend over. To avoid this, make sure your tomato plants have a strong support system.
Some Other Options
Aside from the above-mentioned types of vegetables, you can also try growing these in your raised garden beds:
- Mint: Mint is an excellent choice for a raised bed because it grows very fast. Plant them in a place where they get enough sunlight.
- Celery: Celery plants have a shallow root system and prefer cold weather. They also need a lot of water and compost to grow, but it’s important to ensure that they don’t sit in moist soil. If this happens, the roots will begin to rot.
- Peppers: Peppers love the sunlight and heat. They are easy to grow and require very little care. Note that if peppers start flowering when they are very little, separate the flowers so that the plant can focus on making good, hot peppers for you before it puts in its energy to produce flowers.
The Take-Away
This list includes only a few of the best vegetables you can grow in a raised garden bed. However, there are many more options under the above-mentioned categories that you can try out. You can always plant several different types of vegetables in one raised garden bed, provided that it has enough space for them to grow. Try a few different options and see what works for you and the most important part is: have fun!
