7 Beginner Raised Bed Garden Mistakes to Avoid

I've built 15 raised beds of various shapes and sizes, but by far my favorites are the 4 ft. x 8 ft. beds. Most of my beds are 12" tall however the first bed I ever built was 24" tall and I made the mistake of filling it completely with raised bed mix which hit the pocketbook pretty hard so I switched to 12" tall beds to save money. One thing I do include on all of my raised beds are 2" x 6"'s mounted flat along two sides so my 70 year old posterior has a place to sit while I garden. I try to keep off of my knees as much as possible.

The paths between the beds should be wide enough to accommodate your wheelbarrow. 👍

I almost watched EVERY video about raised beds on youtube, and yet this video is THE MOST USEFUL of all! I learned a lot and cannot wait to build my raised bed garden😊

Fantastic video! I have been gardening for over 60 years and it took me a lifetime to learn the lessons you gave in 13 minutes!

I used cinder blocks to make my beds because wood rots quickly where I live. I can move, rearrange, or disassemble the beds any way I want. I can also use the holes in the blocks to plant extra flowers or herbs. The blocks were less expensive than the lumber.

We built one area to plant using basic cinder block and it works great. We also use the large totes with rope handles (made for your kids toys) to plant in and they have been wonderful! We line them down our arched cattle panels for a 16 foot arch for cucumbers and beans to climb....this year we are adding pie pumpkins and tiny watermelons. The only thing we plant in the ground is corn, this year we may add some carving pumpkins under the corn. For our tomatoes and some flowers we use the black buckets the floral department at Kroger displays in.....they give them away here and work wonderfully! We don't have near the size garden you do, but with our health issues what we do have is a lot for us!

A simple way that I’m trying this year is to char the lumber on the inside with a weed burner. I have heard that some charred Timbers that are buried have been preserved for over a thousand years.

Brian...thank you for this. This year I built new raised beds in my small suburb garden to maximize the production this year....as I was building them, I was recalling all your tips from your how to videos on building them. Hope today is a restful day with your family...have a great week!🍅🏡

You are one of my most favorite people on YouTube! I learn more from you every day! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ Thank you for taking the time and work to make these invaluable videos!

I’ve used scrap scaffolding planks for my first raised bed. A bit long at 13’ x 5’ but it does the job. Next time I used corrugated iron and pressure treated wood to build an 8’ x2’ bed , two planks high which works well. Filled the bottom with logs and crap brushwood and then my own compost. Mr first crop of over-wintered broad (fava) beans is flowering mid-April and looking great. Thank you Brian for so many great tips.

Good informative video. In 2020, we converted one of our field gardens into a raised bed and container garden. Best gardening decision ever! We made 12 4'x16' raised beds and have not regretted the decision to make them full-length -- we use oak fencing boards for our wood and the beds are a foot high. We have 12 raised beds plus 40 5-gal container grow bags. We lined each bed w/ hardware cloth to keep out moles/voles. Two beds are dedicated strawberry beds and we just started one more bed for strawberries. We're Zone 6B and grow a great deal of our foods, canning or freezing our excess. The raised bed garden is fenced to keep our dogs out -- we used cattle panels for that. We have not found that the 16-foot lengths are a problem at all, in fact, it is good to walk lengths to keep an active eye on everything. We also have another garden (a field garden). We won't convert that garden over because it was expensive to make our raised bed garden. Plus at our age, we're not sure we can keep up with the demands of 2 large gardens in years to come...who knows. We used premium fill (mushroom compost and a soil blend - purchased from a reputable business). And we filled our beds to the top. We ordered bulk (2 dump-truck deliveries). Costly, yes, but this soil blend has been fantastic!! Now that the fill has settled, we topped-off the fill this year and the fill-levels are back at the top so that's 12-inches of lush growing soil with fairly decent substrate. In all, our raised beds were done as an investment -- it continues to pay us back in so many ways. We wish that we had done this a decade or 2 ago.

Lots of good advice! I made the paths around my raised beds a little wider than the width of my garden cart, to make it easier to haul compost and mulch in and weeds and other debris out.

This video is perfect timing for me. I have a new house and am planning my garden area. I have 3 deep metal beds to set up for starters. Spring planting in my area usually starts just after Mother's Day, and I'm not sure they'll be up and filled in time for this season, so I will probably be using grow bags.

We just put in two 3.5’x20’ raised beds that are 2’ tall. It’s A LOT of growing space! We used 3 cattle panels and tposts to make a 12’ long trellis over the top that connects the two beds. I love it and don’t mind walking around it at all. We made our beds out of repurposed barn tin and framed the outside panels with treated lumber. The wood doesn’t touch the soil, it’s on the outside and I lined the inside walls with landscape fabric. They turned out beautiful and I think they will last a really long time. We filled them with pine straw, leaves, and small sticks. Our local nursery has a garden blend soil we had delivered…it was our least expensive option and I mixed a ton of perlite into it. I mulched with wood shavings and everything is doing fantastic so far!

So glad I discovered this video and channel. I've seen a lot of gardening channels that offer really helpful advice. But this one (Next Level Gardening) is the BEST I've come across on YouTube. Great tips, concise to-the-point info and I love how he also tells you what to avoid. I checked out another of his videos on how to grow squash/zucchini vertically, something I had no idea you could do. Great channel!

Amazon has provided a huge amount of cardboard for the base of my raised beds. I should probably stop shopping now 😬😂

My beds are 3 x 9. I’m short so 3 ft is my perfect width and I chose 9 ft because I got 2 -12 ft boards and cut 3 ft of each one to make one bed. My beds are now 7 inches but my new beds will be 14 inches high.

Brian, I continue to be a fan of Next Level Gardening and always come away with something to make gardening in my 272 square feet of raised beds a little easier. 78 next week and I'll never quit the fight 😂. Thanks for your help, Brian. 👍

A very good summary of all that concerns, thank you. I recently combined raised bed concept with hugelkulture, and the result is marvelous. I always use crap boards with garden pond lining inside.

So glad you talked about the cloth beds and sweet potatoes and sizes.