raised-garden-beds.com  CEDAR  RAISED GARDEN BEDS

	Perhaps the most important advantage is greatly reduced soil compaction.  Plant roots need air.  In an ordinary garden, you can’t avoid stepping in the garden bed occasionally when doing your everyday gardening.  A properly designed raised bed garden allows you to do all your gardening from the garden path.
	Plants can be spaced a little closer together in a raised bed because you don’t need places to step.  This increases productivity per square foot of bed and reduces weeding when the plants begin to mature. Note:  Avoid the temptation to crowd your plants.  You will still want to use generous plant spacing because your plants will grow much larger in raised beds.
	Raised beds tend to drain away excess moisture better than ordinary garden beds.  This is another advantage that helps the plant roots to breath.  In areas that have saturated soil like Florida and many areas of the South, raised beds may be the only way you can grow many types of plants.
	Soil conditions and types can be controlled more efficiently in a raised bed and they can be varied easily from bed to bed.  Raised beds are the answer when topsoil is thin.
	Water, fertilizer, compost, mulch, etc. can be applied more carefully because they only need to be applied to the garden beds.
	Various studies have shown that raised garden beds produce 1.4 to 2 times as much vegetables and flowers per square foot as ordinary beds, due mainly to the above advantages.  You can have a smaller and more manageable garden that produces more goodies for your table.

	Raised garden beds bring your garden closer to you.  Raised beds are after all, raised!
	Raised beds tend to bring more order and pleasing geometry to your garden, especially when forms or edging are used to define them.
	Raised beds can extend your gardening season.  They tend to warm up a little sooner in the spring and remain productive later in the fall.
	Do your gardening from the comfort of the garden path.  No more bending over to pull weeds or trim plants.  Sit on a stool or put a seat board on your garden wagon!

	If you’ve framed your raised beds with railroad ties, timbers or landscape blocks, disassembly and reassembly is really a lot of hard work.  My back aches just thinking about that.
	If you’ve framed your raised beds with nice wood bed boxes:

You can try to pry the assembled bed boxes out of the soil.  However, the small wood screws that most makers use to attach the form boards to the corner posts might pull out and the boxes could require major repairs.    or...

You can disassemble the bed boxes.  However, on most bed boxes, the screws that hold them together are on the inside and are buried, fouled with soil and probably corroded.