Best Raised Garden Beds 2022 Vego Garden

Vego Garden offers a series of cool DIY modular raised garden beds. The brand's name derives from a portmanteau of Vegetable + Lego, which means you get a collection of highly modular metal-based garden beds. Their innovative design allows full customization for your ideal vegetable garden. 

• Height: To begin with, Vego Garden Beds are available in two heights: 17 and 32 inch. Optimized for root health and 10% taller than other brands means happier plants and less strain on your back.
• Shape: They offer a set of remarkable special shapes from circular, square, rectangular, L-shaped, and most recently even a heart shape! Besides the standard kits, Vego Garden also provides extension kits with individual panels for customers to uniquely customize their garden space.
• Color: Vego Garden raised beds are available in 4 stunning colors: Pearl White, Olive Green, Modern Gray, and British Green.
• Safety: Each Vego Garden features food grade materials, rounded corners and heavy duty protective edging to ensure their garden beds are safe for all kids, gardeners, pets, and food too!

But for us vegetable gardeners, what really sets Vego Garden ahead of the rest of the competing raised garden bed companies is the material! We are growing food in our raised bed afterall.

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 VEGO GARDEN RAISED BED MATERIAL

The company was founded with the goal of launching a modular metal garden bed system with a 20+ year life expectancy, utilizing eco friendly metal materials instead of cutting down trees. 

Vego Garden uses innovative Aluzinc steel to manufacture sustainably organic raised garden beds. Vego Gardens are made with food grade 304 stainless steel hardware. Unlike galvanized steel, Vego Garden panels don't rust or leach toxic chemicals into the soil. The steel used is also 100% recyclable and is made using a green process. 

Because of the affordable pricing and longevity, Vego Garden is the most cost-efficient way to build DIY garden beds. At only $0.4/ft per year in comparison to wooden beds that cost $3/ft per year and up, there is definitely an opportunity for savings.

HOW TO FILL RAISED GARDEN BEDS AND SAVE MONEY 

​​Once you have assembled your Vego Garden, the next task is filling the raised garden beds before planting. One of the most common questions we've been receiving is how to fill a new raised bed and still save money. There are many different methods out there that work well! We have tried many organic growing mediums to fill Back to Eden Raised Garden Beds. From our experience, the Hugelkultur method is the easiest and most cost-efficient method to fill deep raised beds. But of course, we add a little Back to Eden Gardening twist! 

Back to Eden Gardening is a no-dig organic gardening method that emphasizes the health of the soil by mimicking the design of nature. Back to Eden Gardening is one of the easiest methods to use when installing raised beds. Tiling to prepare soil for a garden is not only labor and expensive, it actually increases weed infestations by turning the weed seeds into the surface of your soil. Instead of tilling, disturbing or stripping the soil of weeds, grasses to prepare a garden plot, simply cover the soil to smother them.

This is a vital practice for healthy soil and healthier plant growth. No-dig raised bed gardening allows the soil microbiome, all the beneficial microorganisms and life in the soil to thrive instead of being diminished. The smothered weeds and grasses will feed your plants and soil with nitrogen rich organic matter.

Using free, clean, organic materials like black and white, non-glossy newspaper sheets or blank cardboard works best to smother the weeds and grasses. If needed, first cut down the tops of very tall weeds and grasses and let them lay on the soil. Next, simply lay down the 3-4 sheets of newspaper on top of weeds, grasses and soil at the location of your raised bed garden container. If you don’t have newspaper, use a single layer of cardboard, overlapping to ensure no gaps are left for weed seeds to creep in. If you can, allowing the base of your garden bed to remain open to directly access the native soil below is ideal. An open bottomed raised bed allows for optimal root growth, good drainage and reduced irrigation needs. 

If you don’t have a good space for your raised bed with soil below they can also be installed on a hard base such as concrete. But they will need to be at least 2 feet deep for deep rooted plants to have enough space to grow. You will also need to install a drainage layer on the concrete before adding soil or compost. Coarse gravel or stones work great as an organic drainage layer based on hard surfaces.

Set your raised bed garden frame right on top of the paper or cardboard base layer and follow the simple steps below to fill the bed.

THE HUGELKULTUR METHOD + BACK TO EDEN GARDENING 

Hugelkultur is the process of layering organic garden waste inside the raised garden bed, before adding soil to save on costs, in addition to attracting and preserving moisture. Of German origin, Hugelkultur translates to “mound or hill culture.” It is especially applicable in areas where soil retention and drainage are poor, which is typical of soils found in urban areas.

The materials used include large rotting logs, sticks and other debris that are layered with grass clippings, coffee grounds, compost, and other organic matter. As the material breaks down, it creates a flourishing environment for beneficial fungi and microbes that mimics the natural landscape of a forest. There are many advantages to the Hugelkultur method, including soil quality improvement, minimal maintenance, and water retention. 

In the Hugelkultur method, the large wood pieces are laid at the bottom as they will take the longest time to decompose. The base of logs may take up to 5 years before they break down into rich, wonderful raised garden bed soil. The smaller pieces are placed on top of the larger pieces to fill space, such as branches and sticks, and then grass clippings, leaves, and kitchen scraps. Compost and wood chips are the next two layers of your raised garden bed so you can start planting as the organic matter beneath decomposes.

To create a bountiful garden bed, we highly recommend covering the soil with a wood chip mulch. We mulch the surface of the raised beds with 3-4 inches of arborist wood chips. If you can’t get arborist wood chips as a sheet mulch, consider organic weed free straw as a mulch on your raised garden beds. We recommend choosing organic mulches and fill materials that are locally available to you.

Fresh arborist wood chips or composted wood mulch placed on the surface of your soil will countless benefits. This organic matter will decompose over time, and plant roots will travel deeper into the raised garden bed soil to obtain the nutrition. It will also work as a big sponge, retaining water to maintain an ideal moisture level.  

You can actually sign up to get a free delivery of arborist wood chip mulch right to your home anywhere in the United States using the website Chip Drop that our friend Bryan Kappa started!

What are the advantages of raised bed gardening?