One way to beat a rainy spring is with raised beds. Most people have seen raised beds somewhere or another. But don’t feel disadvantaged if, for some reason, you can’t install permanent raised beds of some sort.

As I have said before, here in America we think everything has to be just perfect. Of course perfection is in the eye of the beholder and in actuality it is rarely obtainable.

But in regards to raised beds; yes you can make them as fancy as you would like but you don’t have to have permanent structures containing them. One expert gardner / farmer I know of said raised beds aren’t really raised, it’s just that the soil around them is lower.

I know that sounds a little funny but think about it for a little bit; one of the most significant advantages of raised beds is that they stay drier then their surrounding ground because there is an elevation difference. But it really doesn’t matter how that elevation difference is obtained. If you can simply work up some soil, and sort of drag the loose soil to the center, you can make a raised bed. There is nothing wrong with making raised beds this way. Gardeners and farmers have been doing it since the beginning.

There doesn’t have to be anything formal, structural or pretty about it. It just has to be done. And that’s what I encourage you to do. Go out and do it. Experiment with raised beds. It may be too late to significantly benefit from them this year but if you make them up this year you will find that you can be way ahead of the game when the next wet spring rolls around. The top of the raised beds will be dry and the rest of the ground will be too wet to do anything. YOU can have the first produce of the growing season.

I’ll see you out in the field,
Parson Rayphe