More folks are planting vegetable gardens this year than have done so in many years. The National Gardening Association’s recent survey, The Impact of Home and Community Gardening in America, indicates that the number of households planning vegetable gardens in 2009 is up nearly 20 percent over 2008. But unlike our grandparents who had enough land to devote to a large garden plot, most people these days have much less land to devote to vegetable production. They also have less time to devote to a large garden. It is a safe bet that many of these new vegetable gardeners are looking for the easiest ways to raise the most produce in a small space.
One way to maximize your production is to use raised beds. Raised beds lend themselves to more intensive planting and can mean greater production per square foot.
Novice gardeners may not know where to begin in creating a raised bed garden. The Alabama Cooperative Extension System recently released a new online publication, “Raised Bed Gardening.” It offers a lot of great information for both new and veteran gardeners. Hard copies of this publication will be available in county Extension offices across the state in the near future.
http://www.garden.org/home
http://www.gardenwriters.org/gwa.php?p=meetings/webinar_2_25.html
http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-1345/ANR-1345.pdf
http://www.aces.edu