Free shipping on orders of $75.00 or more.

Do You Need a Garden Box?

RSS icon

I finished my first garden box over the last week. Many of those I have talked with over social media will likely be shocked by this revelation. I have not been kind to garden boxes in the past, and to be perfectly honest, I will not be kind to them in the future.

Thinking Outside the Box

This is not because boxes are not useful; it is because garden boxes are used too often without gardeners knowing why they use them. Quite often I have someone ask me how much it costs to make one or say that they cannot do a garden because they are not able to afford a box. I ask them why they need a box to garden, then they give me a blank stare and eventually say, “But you need one to grow a vegetable garden…”

Reasons For the Box

Yeah, I guess that means that every garden I grew before last week actually didn’t exist. And I suppose that means that the person asking me how to grow one should not be asking me about how to garden since I have been doing it wrong for decades! But that isn’t really the case is it? Most folks can grow a garden just fine in the soil outside their front or back door. In fact, the overall condition of soil in America is astoundingly good, and there are only a relatively few reasons to look at planting in a grow box rather than the existing soil:

  • Handicap accessibility. This is one of the top reasons I see for grow boxes, especially for the beneficial mind-altering effects gardening has.
  • There is existing concrete, asphalt or gravel where you would like to garden, or you need to make these areas productive.
  • Ground water in the garden area is too high and you need to raise the garden to dry it out.
  • A large number of rocks are in the soil and you are trying to grow a root or tuber crop.
  • You are hoping for a head start in the early part of the year and you don’t need to worry about the bed cooling off early at the end of the season.
  • You have tests that show that your soil is toxic and remediation is not a viable option.

Keep it Simple

I guess that you could put a seventh reason, that you just like tidy little boxes. But that would be the weakest reason since it is based on shear aesthetics. So I will leave it off the list, because personal taste can be so fickle. One of the other reasons that I could ad is that some people just seem to think that things will not work or is somehow massively better because it has a heavy human signature on the work. But that is also not true. There is no proof or even reasonable speculation that a high level of human manipulation is needed or beneficial. In fact, the more science I see the more I find that constant human manipulation is detrimental.

So when you are planning your garden, don’t get caught up in a costly “have to” and keep it simple unless you have a specific need you have to address. It will be cheaper in the long run and you are likely to have much more fun.

Manana!

Identifying 5 Common Lawn Grass Species

Identifying 5 Common Lawn Grass Species

Whether you’re overseeding an existing lawn, thinking about establishing a new lawn or reseeding bare or thinning spots, it’s important to know what kind ...

Should You Ever Let Your Lawn Go to Seed?

Should You Ever Let Your Lawn Go to Seed?

We’ve probably all seen it, and some of us might even be guilty of it from time to time. It can be the result ...

Ready to start your project?

Shop Now