Deep Bed Gardening in a Greenhouse?

I’ve been reading a lot about deep bed gardening for the past couple years. There are many benefits, including an increased worm population in your gardening bed, less weeds, and more vegetables in less space. In preparing our garden for the spring season we decided to give the deep bed gardening a try in our greenhouse.

In years past, I have always used our greenhouse to grow seedlings. Once the plants were large enough and the last chance of frost was over, I would plant them outside. I prefer this method because we line our garden with filter fabric to reduce the weeds, which makes planting from seed virtually impossible . All other plants I had in the greenhouse were in smaller containers on tables. 

In order to establish deep bed gardens in our hobby greenhouse we needed to create beds that would last. Brett and I knocked around many building ideas such as using pressure treated wood, plastic, even stacked pavers.  One evening we are talking about the beds, we wanted the beds to be 4 feet wide and about 8 feet long, and it dawned on us that they would be about the same size as a burial tomb. My husband called around and sure enough a local company had some blemished concrete tombs that were perfect and super cheap!  

We drilled some drainage holes in the sides of each concrete bed, and then filled the bottom with about 16 inches of gravel, a layer of filter fabric, then our homemade potting soil, read this previous post for the recipe. Our kids help to plant all of the seeds and now about a week later, plants are growing! An added benefit to using concrete beds is that you could use sidewalk chalk to write what you’re growing on the side of the bed, I included the germination time, harvest time and the date that we planted. 

  

If you like this idea let me know! 4-Outdoor delivers prefabricated hobby greenhouses for small spaces. We can also custom build large greenhouses similar to ours. If you like the idea of deep bed gardens in your greenhouse, we can custom mold concrete beds for you!