Alright, garden crew — grab your coffee, your compost tea, or whatever liquid motivation you’re running on, because it’s time for a little raised bed real talk.
This isn’t one of those Pinterest-perfect garden recaps where everything’s flourishing and the tomatoes never got blight. No, this is the honest, dirty-handed, “yep-that-was-a-mistake” kind of update that helps us all grow better gardens — and better food.
Because listen… you build a raised bed thinking you’re a few weeks away from the cover of Modern Homesteader Monthly, but sometimes? You end up growing more weeds than lettuce. And that’s okay.
Let’s talk about what went down in my raised garden beds this season — the good, the bad, and the stuff I’m absolutely changing next time around.
The Setup: What I Started With
- Four 4×8 galvanized steel beds
- Filled with the good stuff: layered logs, sticks, compost, and a top layer of 50/30/20 soil-compost-coco coir mix
- Planted everything from kale and carrots to tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and a rogue watermelon that I swear I didn’t plant (thanks, compost gods)
What Worked (Give These Plants a Trophy)
🥬 Kale & Chard
These absolute champs didn’t flinch. Rain, heat, caterpillars — didn’t matter. They kept producing like they had something to prove.
🧅 Onions & Garlic
Planted them in the fall, mulched heavy with straw, and let them mind their business. Come spring, they popped up like, “You rang?” Zero maintenance. All flavor.
🍅 Cherry Tomatoes
Not the big slicers — those were drama queens — but the cherry tomatoes were straight-up dependable. Sweet, bite-sized garden candy.
🌿 Basil
Planted it next to the tomatoes and they became besties. Grew huge, kept aphids away, and made pesto season a full-time thing.
What Flopped (So We Can All Learn From My Pain)
🥕 Carrots
Note to future self: fluffy soil is non-negotiable. Half of them came out forked or stubby like sad orange gnomes. I got overconfident and didn’t sift the topsoil well enough.
🥒 Cucumbers
Started strong, then got bitter and buggy. I planted too many in one space, didn’t trellis early, and the mildew said, “Thanks for the invitation.”
🌱 Lettuce
Bolted in like two weeks. We had an early heat wave and I didn’t shade the bed. Boom — bitter, lanky, lettuce gone wild.
Lessons Learned (aka My Garden Therapy Notes)
- Soil settles a lot.
Like, a lot a lot. I had to top off nearly 4 inches of soil by mid-spring. If you don’t refill, your plants will suffer. Don’t be stingy with compost. - Mulch is not optional.
The beds I mulched with straw or wood chips needed half the water, had fewer weeds, and kept roots cooler. Mulch = sanity saver. - Don’t skip the trellis.
Cucumbers, tomatoes, beans — they all need a place to climb. If you think “I’ll trellis it later,” spoiler: you won’t. - Pests show up fast.
I spotted cabbage worms, squash vine borers, and aphids all within a week. This season, I’m going in with neem oil, row cover, and chicken patrol from day one.
What I’m Changing Next Season
✅ Adding drip irrigation
No more dragging hoses like a tired pirate every evening. I’m installing a simple drip system with a timer. Let the water do the work.
✅ Companion planting with purpose
More marigolds. More herbs. More trap crops. Fewer monoculture rows that scream “all-you-can-eat buffet” to bugs.
✅ Sifting and fluffing the top layer
Especially in root veggie beds. No more rock-hard surprises for my carrots. They deserve better.
✅ Staggered planting
I’m starting lettuce every two weeks in smaller amounts, not all at once. That way, I get baby greens all season instead of one bitter harvest and a sad goodbye.
Final Thoughts (and One Big Truth)
A raised bed garden is never really “done.” It’s always evolving, breaking down, building up, and surprising you — sometimes in the best ways, sometimes not.
But here’s the deal: every flop teaches you more than a flawless harvest ever could.
So if your squash shriveled, your carrots got weird, or you forgot to water for three days (oops), shake it off. You’re doing the work. You’re growing food. You’re learning your land.
And that’s what makes it magic.
Now go check your compost pile, toss some mulch in that empty bed, and get ready for round two. The garden’s just getting warmed up.
