How To Improve Your Garden

Drainage By Making a Raised

Bed

Good drainage is an essential element for any garden. If it

holds too much water – either naturally or after heavy rain

for example – then the excess water can be harmful to any

plants you have which do not cope with it.

If your garden does not drain quickly enough then prepare for some carnage amongst water

sensitive plants. However all is not lost as you may be able to improve and enhance your garden

draining by creating a raised bed. It is not that hard to do and can pay long term benefits.

If you are planning on planting any form of flower, vegetable, fruit etc then you will of course check

out any watering and draining requirement before planting to see if your current gardening

conditions are suitable for whatever you chose to plant and grow.

However if you have good drainage presently though something happens to change that or you have

poor draining and want to try and tackle that to accommodate more sensitive planting

arrangements then do consider the introduction of a raised bed.

Although if you are unsure about what sort of draining your garden has at the moment, here’s a

simple rule of thumb test you can try for an idea. Dig a small diameter hole around nine or ten

inches deep in the soil and fill it with water.

Leave it for about twenty four hours then refill the hole and leave it for around nine or ten hours

before having another look. If the water has not gone your garden and soil probably is retaining

water to a high degree which could damage water sensitive plants.

So now it’s time to think about that raised bed to improve overall drainage. This is essentially

nothing more than making a simple border using enough soil and compost to raise it by around six

inches. This alone should help excess water to drain away quicker.

A quick and easy way to retain the soil and compost in your new raised bed to stop it falling away

again is to use some wood to form a frame and keep things in place. Not difficult, right?

Now you can start to plant in your raised bed as normal though being mindful about the roots going

too far in to the original soil level. You ideally want the roots to remain as far as possible in the new

raised area with the improved drainage as the new soil and compost mix you have put down there

will help water to dissipate quicker and not harm water sensitive plants.

You might do this just in certain areas of your garden for plants that do need faster drainage whilst

leaving other areas of your garden untouched if you have plants there which can handle water

better and are not as sensitive to it.

So now you have discovered a quick and easy method to test how well your garden drains or retains

water together with a simple solution you can easily put in to action. It is suggested that perhaps you

test out your raised bed initially on a smallish area of your garden for testing purposes then roll it

out to a more extensive area if you see positive results.

I hope you found this article helpful and interesting. Another thing you might consider introducing to

your own garden wormery. The worms are in your garden anyway so why not put them to use to do

what they do naturally and recycle your garden waste, food scraps etc and produce organic fertiliser

you can then use on your garden.

To see how easy it is to set up your own garden wormery you may find this free ebook of interest. To

download your free copy please visit the URL below:

>> http://gardenwormeryguide.com <<