Cultivation plan for the raised bed
To ensure variety in your kitchen, you should frequently rotate the types and varieties of vegetables in your raised bed. A colorful mix of vegetables is not only an attractive eye-catcher, but the plants are also less susceptible to diseases and pests.
Cultivation plan for the raised bed
Ordinary vegetable gardeners
You've probably experienced this before: You've bought a tray of 9 to 12 tender seedlings at the market or garden center and planted them right away in the garden. A few weeks later, the big "harvest glut" comes when all the plants are ready for harvest at once, within a few days. Broccoli, kohlrabi, or carrots will keep well in the refrigerator for a few days or, after being cleaned and blanched, can be frozen. Lettuce, on the other hand, wilts after a short time and is no longer particularly appetizing.
Quantity planning
When planning your crops, it's helpful to keep a log of your regular vegetable purchases at the market or supermarket over a certain period of time. Who knows how many onions, tomatoes, and lettuce heads you use in your own kitchen each week? From these records, you can calculate the required quantities. For example, you use two garlic bulbs per month, which equates to approximately 24 bulbs per year. With a safety margin—not all plants grow equally well—planting approximately 30 cloves of garlic is sufficient to cover your own garlic needs. This calculation also quickly makes it clear that growing some vegetables in raised beds isn't really worth it for self-sufficiency. If you consume half a kilogram to one kilogram of potatoes per person per week, you would need two to three potato pyramids to harvest enough. Instead, plant "special" potatoes in your raised bed, unusual varieties, or ones that aren't available at the market—as a delicacy rather than to cover basic needs.
How much is enough, how much is too much?
Unfortunately, there's no rule of thumb for calculating your own needs; tastes, the number of people in a household, and storage options, whether in the basement or a freezer, vary too much. However, some average yields can be helpful as a guide when calculating the plants needed to harvest the necessary quantities:
- Tomato: 5–10 kg of fruit per plant, or more depending on the variety and fertilization.
4 plants/m2.
- Leaf lettuce: Plant 3–4 plants at intervals of 2–3 weeks for a continuous harvest. 16 plants per m².
- Sprouting broccoli and zucchini: 1 plant for 1–2 people, 2 plants/m2.
- Beans: grown in sets. Approx. 2 kg pods/m2.
- Peas: Intercropping. Approx. 0.5–1 kg/m2.
Cultivation in sets
To avoid all vegetables of one variety ripening at once, and to ensure a continuous harvest, it is better to grow small quantities in staggered batches. If you sow a 1 m long row of carrots every 14 days, you can have a fresh harvest for months. Batch growing is also worthwhile for beans, peas, herbs, and lettuce – i.e. all vegetables with a relatively short growing period. This works best with purchased young plants: whenever a leaf lettuce is half-harvested, replant. With lettuce and herbs such as chervil or arugula, it is easier to re-sow every 10–14 days and harvest the entire plant than to laboriously pick tough stems and flower shoots from the harvest.
crop rotation
Crop rotation is the annual rotation of different vegetables in a garden bed. This method is used to prevent disease from taking hold and to accommodate the different nutrient requirements of the vegetables. In the first year, you plant heavy feeders like tomatoes, celeriac, cabbage, and zucchini. In the second year, medium feeders like chard, carrots, and lettuce are followed. In the third year, light feeders like beans and peas, as well as herbs, onions, and leeks, are added. Of course, you can also plant light feeders in the first year in raised beds—they will simply grow more abundantly.
Pre- and post-culture
Very clever gardeners take into account the positive influences of different vegetables on each other. For example, peas are a good pre-crop for heavy feeders like brassicas and zucchini, which benefit from the nitrogen fixed in the roots of the legumes. Beets grow particularly well if the bed has previously been used for kohlrabi or lettuce, and before planting peppers, you should sow radishes and/or lettuce. And before planting the tomato seedlings, there's still room for a set of spinach.
Practical tip
Divide your raised bed into a grid using string or narrow slats—e.g., 30 × 30 cm or 40 × 40 cm. Plant different vegetables in each of these squares. The advantage: You'll naturally create a beautiful mixed crop, and the small grid squares prevent you from planting too many seedlings of one type. For example, one small square can hold 1–2 lettuce seedlings, 1 tomato, or 1 chard.
Mixed culture
Variety is key, and this also applies to raised beds. Mixed culture, i.e. growing different vegetables and herbs of different species together in one or neighboring beds, has several advantages. The nutrient requirements of different vegetables are taken into account, so you plant heavy feeders next to light feeders, or shallow-rooted plants like onions next to deep-rooted plants like chard. The relatively dense planting prevents weeds from spreading, and pests also have a harder time multiplying en masse than in a monoculture. In general, when combining different vegetables, members of the same plant family are not well suited to growing before, after, or next to each other. They usually have similar requirements and are affected by the same diseases and pests.
- Good neighbors include parsley and marigolds, carrots and onions, cabbage and celery.
- Less well-matched: beans and peas, cabbage and onions, lettuce and celery.
Plant families
While the peppers in the rear raised bed are about to be harvested, a new generation of autumn lettuces, radishes, and bok choy is growing in the front bed. Vegetables and herbs, like all plants, are classified into different botanical families.
- Umbelliferous plants include carrots, parsnips, root parsley, fennel, celery, lovage, parsley and dill.
- Spinach and beetroot are goosefoot plants.
- Goosefoot plants include chard and Good King Henry.
- Brassicas include broccoli, radishes, turnips, beets, cauliflower and Asian salads.
- Asteraceae include lettuces.
- Cucurbits include cucumbers, zucchini and pumpkins.
- Nightshade plants include tomatoes, peppers and chilies, eggplants and potatoes.
- Legumes include beans and peas.
- The onion family includes garlic, leeks, onions, chives and shallots.
- Strawberries belong to the rose family.
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The content of this article is from the book:
Folko Kullmann
Raise the bed! – Know when! Gardening according to the phenological calendar
Price: 14.99 € (D) / 15.50 € (A) / 19.90 sFr
ISBN: 978-3-8338-5579-5
Raise the Bed! is the title of Folko Kullmann's new GU guide. True to the motto "Know when!", the author explains how to successfully garden according to the phenological calendar. Whether rustically made of wood, formally made of metal, or elegantly made of brick or natural stone, raised beds are not only good for your back, they also look great.
