Propagation: Raised Beds Pros, Cons, Observations, 2 by Gypsi

Gypsi wrote:
I am in North Texas, and my tallest raised bed is about the height of a tidy cat bucket. It is a bag bed, sewn from pond underlayment, filled with dirt, and the surrounding tidy cat buckets hold the sides up. I have used it for onions, sweet potatoes and this year my tomatoes were in it.

The disadvantages to raised beds here are 2. One fire ants. Two: keeping adequate moisture in the beds.

My other raised bed that is still in use is a low hugel kultur bed, maybe elevated 8 inches. Had way too much nitrogen last year, but did reasonably well with onions and tomatoes this year, now has some garlic and broccoli planted for winter.

Pictures are not current, as right now more weeds than swiss chard, and only weeds in the fabric bag bed. It did have a nice crop of squash this fall, spaghetti, buttercup and a couple of yellow summer squash. I started the seeds August 9th.

The hardware cloth cover was for the guinea, the feral cats, the squirrels, you get the idea. this was an April 2019 pic, onions in the bag bed and I think swiss chard and broccoli in the hugelkultur bed.

2nd pic, bag flowerbed in my front yard. I had extra dirt after I converted a giant turkscap to a pond hole, and needed to expand it to make the pond look decent. piled it all there, it actually isn\'t a bag, dirt on top of dirt., but it is surrounded by the pond underlayment material I thought I would grow azaleas but couldn\'t get enough water to stay put