Maintaining a Raised Bed.

Raised beds have an advantage over normal garden rows in that they don’t get walked on so they don’t pack down as quickly. They are subject to some packing from rain and from the deterioration of the organic matter in the bed. Every 3 to 5 years the bed needs to be reworked. Depending on how badly the bed is packed the degree of reworking can vary. This weekend the bed that originally housed strawberries was reworked.

This bed was only 3 years old and was not severely packed. The strawberry plants had been eaten by something so a minor reworking was done to refresh the bed. The top 10” of soil was removed to a new bed in about ¼ of this bed. The bottom was covered with a few inches of compost and the next section of bed was dug and the soil placed in the first section. This process was repeated until the whole bed was done. Some of the dirt that was intended for the new bed was used to cover the last ¼ of the old bed. Since nothing is being planted in this bed now, the whole thing was covered with leaves.

David Segrest is an International REALTOR in Charlotte, NC. His email is david@segrestrealty.com , His webpage is http://www.segrestrealty.com , and his international real estate blog is http://dointernationalrealestate.blogspot.com/