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Frank Wertheim, Extension Educator: "Here's a raised bed that's already finished. One
thing I wanted to mention is that with raised beds, because they do dry out quicker than
a normal in-ground bed, compost is always important. But with a raised
bed, it's even that much more important. When you're preparing your soil, you want to amend
that with probably up to 25% compost, and the easiest way to do that is to have your
topsoil in your wheelbarrow, do three buckets of topsoil and one bucket
of compost, mix that up good, fill your raised bed, so that by the time it's full, the compost
is nice and spread throughout the bed. This bed has been built for a while, so it's still
important to come back each year and replenish, because every
time you harvest, you are harvesting some of the nutrients and organic matter,. So,
I'm going to add a wheelbarrow of quality compost and then we'll rake that out and shovel
it in.
"Getting on about half an inch of compost each year is a good goal. If you have access
to commercial compost, it's much more inexpensive because you can buy it by the yard. If you
don't, you can buy it by the bag, but it will cost you a little bit
more to do it that way.
"Now, I'm just going to turn it under a little bit. If you do have any lime or fertilizer
that you want to put in, now would be a good time to do that. Of course, you want to do
that by the recommendations of your soil test.
"We're going to get our plastic ready so it can go over the bed as a mini greenhouse.
To do that, I'm using batting strips that you can get at a lumber yard--they're a little
bit thinner than the 1/3 strapping. I'm just going to staple this on,
and then we can roll it up a little when we get it into the channels."