What Plants to Grow in Each Raised Bed (bed depth vs root size)

If your plants are not thriving this season, it might not be the soil or the sun or even the seeds. It simply might be that your bed is just too shallow. In this video, I'm going to explain to you how deep your raised bed should be, depending on each plant that you want to grow. And I'm going to share a simple formula so that you never forget. Most beginner gardeners set up their gardens without actually thinking about the things they're going to grow inside of them. But the depth of your raised beds could actually make or break your harvest. What most of us forget is that the depth of your raised beds affect how big the roots of all your plants can grow. And when it comes to a vegetable garden, the roots are everything. So instead of simply asking, how big should my raised bed be? Like how wide and how long? Instead we should be asking, what are the key things I want to grow in this raised bed? And. And how big do the roots of those plants grow? So you may have heard of my book Leaves, Roots and Fruit, and it's from this book that I'm getting this formula. I'll put a link to the book just in case you haven't read it yet, right below this video, or you can check it out from a local library. So we go back to second grade science, where we learned how a plant grows. We know that the leaves come first and then big, deep roots are grown and then a plant goes to flower and fruit. So in the vegetable garden, you want to think about the plant you're growing or what you want to harvest from that plant. For some plants, we're harvesting the roots. We want to pull that plant up from its roots and eat and enjoy the root. Some plants we want the flower or the fruit, we want to pick off that juicy harvest at the end of the plant's life. And for other plants, we just want the leaf, we want to harvest from the plant early in its growth stage. So if you're growing in that first stage, if you're growing a plant to get its leaves, then good news for you, your raised bed does not need to be very deep. Almost all the plants that we grow in the leafy green families, they have very shallow roots and they don't need a deep bed at all. In fact, they can grow in a 6 inch tall raised bed. So if you're growing spinach or arugula, spring mix, butter crunch, any green that you enjoy on your plate. And this also includes herbs, things like oregano, rosemary, thyme, sage, cilantro, dill, parsley, Orange. All of these leafy greens that we enjoy in the kitchen, they only need about 6 inch of depth in the raised bed. You do want to have a raised bed for these plants though, because they have very fragile, tender roots. And if your soil is clay heavy, if your soil is not amended, it's going to be hard to have plants that don't suffocate or drown in a native soil. So they do need that really nice soil blend that helps them thrive that you can get in a raised bed, but they only need about six inches of it. By the way, if you don't know my soil blend yet, I'll put a link to that below. This video too, gives you my recipe so you can make a great soil blend for your six inch tall bed. Now, moving on to the next stage of the plant's life, the roots. You can just think and imagine that a plant that's growing, that we're growing for its root, we're going to need some more space underground for that. So you don't want to just have a bed that is exactly as deep as you need for that root to grow. You want to give some extra space below that root. So we're thinking about radishes, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, all these plants that we harvest, their roots. You want to have a deeper bed than you need for your leafy greens. So for this kind of harvest, we want to focus on a bed that's about 12 inches deep. Now, there's very few plants that are going to grow down to that 12 inch line, but you are going to have carrots that are going to stretch 8 or 10 inches down, and beets are going to stretch 5, 6 inches down. So by having a 12 inch deep bed, you're giving plenty of space for that root to spread out, get all the nutrients, the airflow and the water that it needs to grow to its full potential. So 6 inches for a leafy green plant, 12 inches for a root plant. And then finally we have our fruiting plants. So these are the plants that we're growing for flowers or fruit. We got peas and beans, we got cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, zucchini. All of these plants that we're growing for their flower and fruit, we want to give them a deeper bed. And from my experience, I've had the most luck and success with a bed that's 18 inches tall. This gives a ton of space for these plants to really spread out their roots to go deep into the bed, to get all the nutrients, water and air that they need and in order to support the plant growing to its full potential. So those are the numbers. 6 inches for leafy greens, 12 inches for roots, and 18 inches for fruit. Depending on what you want to grow in the garden. That's how you should measure the depth of your raised bed. Now, even if you've got the deepest raised bed possible, there are still some plants that I generally don't put into a raised bed. The first is potatoes. Potatoes just spread out. They need lots of space for all that tuber growth. And the potatoes are pretty easy to grow in a barrel or even in the ground. So I just saved my raised bed space for the plants that are a little bit more picky. I also stay away from things like asparagus and rhubarb. These are perennials that really want to spread out and could eventually take up an entire bed. So I'd really prefer to keep those in the ground near my kitchen garden, but not inside my raised beds. I also don't put anything in the raised bed that is a native plant or a pollinator friendly plant because those plants are so easy peasy, they're not picky at all, and they generally don't need a special soil blend to grow in. So I would rather prioritize the plants in my raised beds to be ones that are more picky that want a really nice soil blend. And I'll put natives pollinator friendly plants all around the garden, but definitely save that raised bed space for the plants that really need it. So here is the simple formula that you will never forget. And the depth of your bed is going to increase by 6, 6 inches every time you move to the next stage of plant growth. So when you're growing leafy greens, you're at 6 inches height for your raised bed. When you're growing root crops, you're going to be at 12 inches height for your raised bed. And when you're growing fruiting crops, you're going to be at 18 inches, 6, 12 and 18 leaves, roots and fruit. That's a simple formula you will never forget. Now, when you get those raised beds built, you're going to need to fill them with some awesome soil that's going to get all your plants to grow like crazy. And I've got a recipe to share with you right here.