Gardening is one of life's pleasures, and if you are an avid gardener, you have experienced the rewards that come with it.
Beautiful flowers for outside and inside your home, a delicious bounty of vegetables to prepare the most appetizing dishes, and the serenity that comes when you sit to enjoy all this.
However, many times gardening comes with its challenges.
Sometimes, the gardener has to be proactive in learning how to deal with them - that is if the goal is a lush and beautiful garden.
Some of these challenges come with the type of soil that you have in your garden.
If you have a soil that is too dry and does not retain water, your plants may look tired, faded, and thirsty all the time.
Extra watering may be your challenge, or maybe it is the opposite - too much water.
If your soil retains too much water and does not drain properly, your plants will drown and rot eventually.
This is a bit more difficult to manage than the lack of moisture.
A Way to take care of this problem, if nothing seems to work, is by planting in raised garden beds.
Garden beds not only give appeal to your garden but they facilitate the care of your plantings.
Gardening beds will help you control the type of soil, the moisture, the feeding of the plants, and the weeds.
You can make the border from stone, wood, brick, or any other material that will appeal to you.
A small bed will raise about five inches from the ground.
Add the soil as well as compost, a great fertilizer and plant food.
You can make your own compost by using organic material from your garden and food scraps from the kitchen.
The benefits to your garden beds are immense.
You can also add manure.
Let your bed settle before planting; some material will compact and you may need to add more soil.
If you are going to locate your bed where there is grass, you will have to clear the area, so grass does not grow in your bed.
You can grind this grass and turn it into mulching material or compost material.
Once you are ready to plant, select plants that do not have long roots.
You do not want long root plants because they'll go into the ground, and you will have the same problem with saturation and moisture - it will defeat the purpose of the raised garden bed.
Plant them the same way you do in your garden, water them, and prune them as needed.
You will see and improvement in the color and texture of your plants by manipulating their growing conditions with the implementation of raised garden beds.
You will probably enjoy gardening more, now that you can control their environment better.