Q: I built a raised bed garden last year and watered it enough to keep everything alive – but my plants grew sluggishly and were not deep green in color. My garden was not very productive. I’ve done well in this bed before! What am I missing?
A: Your problem’s entirely due to low soil fertility. Here’s a quick rundown of what likely went wrong last year, and how to fix it.
Last year was unusually hot, even by North Texas standards, which forced you to water more heavily than normal. Your soil fertility rinses out with your water! Whatever fertilization you’re accustomed to doing couldn’t keep up with how fast you were washing the nutrition out of your soil.
Make sure to maintain a modest layer of mulch on top of the garden bed area and add more if the mulch has thinned or broken down unduly. Covered soil doesn’t dry out as badly between watering, and fewer waterings will keep more of your soil nutrition where it belongs. Additionally, raised beds do need to be fertilized more aggressively to make up for the inevitable leaching out of soil fertility from normal watering. This fertilization can be an organic or a synthetic fertilizer, but whatever you use should be either a balanced fertilizer or one with slightly higher nitrogen than anything else. The pale and stunted growth definitely calls for extra nitrogen.
This is a quick and easy fix. You should have significantly better results this coming year.