Raised Beds vs. SWCs?

[teribeth]

We're considering doing a major overhaul of our side yard and converting it to a huge garden area. It gets a lot of sun light but right now the soil isn't in great shape. We had been thinking of doing raised beds but now I'm wondering if it would be worth my while to build a bunch of self-watering containers. It gets hot here in the summer and I'd

Comments

[momomom]

Another vote for raised beds. SWCs are the 2nd best thing to Raised bed in most cases. Much better than normal containers but there is nothing like growing in the real soil which builds up real microbes and worms over time.

[teribeth]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

[plantyhamchuk]

Not understanding all the love for raised beds here - you'll lose even more water that way. I'd just work with the ground you have, improving the soil as you go. I wouldn't try to immediately garden all of that area, I'd slowly work on one area at a time, supplementing with the SWC or just giant sterilite containers or something.

If you water every day, the plants will have weak and shallow roots - they never "learn" to go deep to get moisture. It really doesn't matter how much you water if your soil isn't good though - compost and mulch, more mulch, more compost, these are your friends. We're particularly found mushroom compost. And when you water, water in the late evening for the least amount of loss to evaporation.

Keep us posted! You have a lot of space to work with :)

[robby]

I don't used raised beds, either. I want to get my big rototiller in there and really mix things up before I plant. I've always heard you should water in the morning, not at night.

[plantyhamchuk]

Sorry, my bad, water in the morning. We use cutter mattocks, but we aren't dealing with large areas of space. Our landlord wanted a raised bed, so we just framed the in-ground bed with wood. We just came out of a serious drought in our area, so we became very water conscious.

[teribeth]

Yeah either way I'm going to have to do some work. The soil back there isn't great at all (don't let the giant mustard greens in the picture fool you).

[teribeth]

That's a good point about being able to leave the bottoms open.