Raised beds! From century’s people have been using this in their garden to grow healthy crop. It even provides efficient and back saving way to grow flowers, vegetables and herbs easily at home. Even though raised bed gardening improves drainage and simplifies the control of weeds and pests, one should know how to use it properly and what to use at the bottom of it.
If you’re planning to use garden bed for the first time this year, you may be wondering what need to be placed at the bottom of bed. Don’t worry! Have a look on below materials you can use as a raised bed floor that helps your plants thrive.
What is the use of placing bottom material of your garden bed?
It’s not mandatory to create a raised bed floor, but doing it has several advantages like:
- It stops borrowing pests like voles, moles and gophers from entering raised beds
- It makes the bed more durable
- Prevents all types of toxins from leaching in to the soil
- Prevent weeds from growing from the ground below
What To Put At The Bottom Of Your Raised bed?
Newspaper:
Newspaper is one of the best and cheapest things to use for your raised garden beds. Even though it last not very longer but, still something is better than nothing. Take your newspaper and put it at the bottom in a manner so the edges of newspaper overlap each other.
Placing newspapers will easily reduce the growth of weeds and over time they will decompose and add a layer of humus in your raised bed.
Alternatively, you can also place sheets of newspaper towards the top of your planters for added moisture retention benefit that mulch provides.
Any Kind Of Plastic:
If you have any kind of plastic in your home, please make use of it for your raised beds. Any kind of plastic can easily become a barrier, but not good for drainage. So, make sure to drill some holes for the plastic before placing them at the bottom of your raised beds which will last years and stop weed germination.
Landscape Fiber:
Landscape fiber is a special kind of fiber which is made of recycled material like linen or polyester. This fiber has lots of holes for drainage and water transformation. It lasts for longer time for almost 10 years that means your raised bed is safe from weeds and also absolutely environmentally friendly.
Cardboard:
Cardboard is just like newspapers, but it lasts little longer when compared with newspaper. It also works great to prevent weeds developing at the bottom of raised bed and after decomposition they add humus in the soil.
Gopher Wire:
Never confuse yourself with chicken wire and gopher wire. Use gopher wire on the bottom of your raised bed to keep pests out of your garden bed and there is no drainage issue while using gopher wire.
Concrete Slab:
If you feel the soil is terrible to place raised bed, you can build your own concrete slab and put it bottom of your raised bed. But, here are some things you need to remember before you place concrete slab on the bottom of your raised garden bed.
- Drill some holes in concrete slabs with drill machine for proper drainage.
- Add a layer of small stones on the top of concrete slabs before adding soil on it.
- Then add good soil mix of pebble layer, because some plants need roots go very deep for better growth.
- Add good compost every year for the healthy growth of plants.
