Celebrate “culture” in agriculture & share skills like growing, cooking, canning

Question About Raised Bed Depth

I want to start a raised bed and I have read the square foot garden book. It says that I can make boxes that are 6 inches deep. I am worried about the wind here in Oklahoma blowing the plants over since they will not have very deep roots. I am new to gardening so I don't know if this is even a problem but I know that we get really strong wind. Any thoughts?

Tags: bed, foot, raised, square, wind

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Trell Johnson on January 5, 2010 at 2:27pm

I wouldn't worry too much about the wind. Practically all the vegetable crops you could grow in a raised bed will only set roots down to 6" or so anyway. Notable exeption: Corn. Rule of Thumb. If the plant will not blow over if planted directly in the ground, it will not blow over in a raised bed either.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rachel Hoff on January 6, 2010 at 6:50pm

Now, it depends on the types of crops you are planting. 6" is rather shallow when most plants do best when they are allowed to have deep roots. I always did 10-12" deep raised beds. Carrots, unless you are growing the short stubby ones must have deep soil, as do other root veggies, including beets (root system can go as far as 2' down).

I currently have too much garden for raised beds (cost prohibitive) so all of our in-ground beds are done by double digging, allowing 18-24" of loose soil.

French Intensive Gardening (similar to what Bartholomew describes, but an older, more reliable gardening method) is based off of deep rooting, rather than lateral rooting, and relies heavily on the double digging of beds. However, Bartholomew, for some reason, doesn't give deep beds much credo. Having done Bartholomew's program, and now doing French Intensive, I can safely say that the French Intensive method is much more successful.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Carls on January 7, 2010 at 1:47pm

When I built my raised beds here in Texas last spring the very helpful and well-informed folks at the Natural Gardener recommend a depth of 8-10". Their concern was not the wind, but rather, the dry conditions here in Texas.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Alicia Peckham on January 22, 2010 at 11:05am

I have the square foot raised bed garden boxes. Our backyard is quite windy imo. Last year was our first garden and we planted corn and they didn't blow down, but they also only got about 3' tall (I'm not sure why they didn't grow to full height). I think though if you were worried about that, depending on the crop I guess, you could place stakes around the outside and make a grid, like the one that gets placed on top of the bed (out of twine, wood, whatever) for the plants to grow up between.