Is anybody out there into this?  I've been gardening in raised beds for years.  Found them to be very low maintenance which works great for me since I work full-time.  Kind of limited to what can be grown without going vertical.  Also start my own plants from seed- I love the challenge.  Sell the extra plants I don't use. I'm still learning so maybe you have some tips I don't know about.   

 I have two small raised bed gardens - here's a post from my blog about last year's crop:

http://patverettosfrugalliving.blogspot.com/2007/07/raised-bed-gardens.html 

Pat,    The link won't work for me. ( this could easily be a my-quirky-computer-only-problem : )

    Raised bed gardening would be an ideal fantasy garden for me. The initial expense and work of framing and filling a raised bed is daunting. It would be wonderful to have raised beds for drainage and to warm the soil, as it's cold and wet here.

After many years of adding composted manure  to the soil , the area where I have my cutting garden is somewhat raised now, ( without an actual frame) . The flowers do much better now than when first started.

Hi,  I currently have 8 boxes and plan on adding more this year.  Yes the initial expense may be high but there are ways of keeping it lower.  We used boards from an old chicken coup we tore down for the frames.  When the kids asked what I wanted for my birthday in March, I said- "dirt".  They came thru with 2 pick-up loads! (How many people can say they got dirt for their birthday!)   I go out in the cow pasture and collect cow manure for fertilizer which I add to the soil after cleaning out the gardens in the fall.  We raised rabbits for a few years- that's also great and I'd make "rabbit poop tea" and water the growing plants with it.  I've canned some greenbeans and of course froze some sweet peppers but usually we eat most of the harvest or pass it out to friends.  Canning takes along time- that I just don't have. And a pressure canner won't fit on my stove because of an overhead oven. I really want to work on preserving more of the harvest this year.  I'd like to raise potatoes but I've never had any luck with them.  I used an old galvanized rinse tub and as the plants got taller, I'd add more soil.  Someone told me they did that and I thought I'd give it a try but the potatoes were real small.  I have plenty of room for a traditional garden- we live on a 60 acre farm but this works best for me right now.  Maybe when I retire I'll go that route. 

Pumpkin, "Dirt" is exactly the sort of thing my family would expect me to ask for. For Christmas, i asked for bird seed (didn't get it, but did get a gorgeous hand blown glass hummingbird feeder, with an ant moat. : )

You're right. There are scrap boards around here that I could start with, do some simple framing for a small raised bed. There is a pile of topsoil from when the house was built that I have whittled away at over the years...it wouldn't be too much trouble to do a small bed to start. And we have a free source for composted horse manure...so no excuse, really, not to try it.

I don't have the ambition for canning, either. I like to freeze things, but that's about the extent of my interest in food preservation.

chamomile:

Pat,    The link won't work for me. ( this could easily be a my-quirky-computer-only-problem : )

For some reason it wouldn't work for me, either, although I could copy and paste the link into a new browser and it worked... anyway, it should work now.  

Thanks , Pat! : )...the pics were most welcome...we're expecting more snow tonight...*

chamomile,  Doesn't take much to make us happy huh?!!!  My friend gets a diamond ring, new car, Cancun vacation- she about flipped when I told her about the dirt!  I get vacation time and have thought of taking it around harvest time to learn more about canning but I really kinda hate the thought of doing that!  Maybe I'll concentrate more on the freezing although I do love canned greenbeans! 

Pat,  Thanks for the link, it worked for me.  Enjoyed the pictures and the info.  FYI, that was the first blog I've ever visited.  (I live such a sheltered life!)

 Chamomile, I have been told to be careful using horse manure. That they do not digest the weed seeds so you can end up with a lot of weeds. The best way to use it is to make a manure tea and water plants with it.  I make the manure tea in a 5 gallon bucket with rain water. Not 100% sure about this. A horse farmer told me  that many years ago. Maybe someone here  knows more than me. Babs