Many beginners struggle with the thought that what vegetables are best for raised beds gardening. Raised bed vegetable gardening is becoming popular day by day because of its flexibility.
But many people choose the wrong vegetable for raised beds as a result they find the raised bed gardening too hard. So, it is important for you to know which vegetables will be best for your raised beds.
Here in this article, I am going to suggest to you some of the best vegetables for your raised beds vegetable garden. Let’s dig in deeper!
16 best vegetables to grow in your raised bed garden
After preparing the soil of your bed, you need to choose the raised bed crops. There may be a wide range of vegetables to grow but certain types of them grow well in the raised beds.
Some deep roots vegetables and root crops also need deep soil to grow. Some may need wider space to grow. To your surprise, raised beds can give all these facilities. Besides, the soil temperature of the raised beds is perfect for growing vegetables.
So let’s see some delicious vegetables you can grow in your limited space raised beds.
| Vegetable Name | Harvest Time | Germination Time | Planting Time |
Spacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lettuce | 65 – 80 days | 2 – 15 days | Spring, Fall | 6 – 18 inches |
| Leafy Greens (Spinach) | 40 – 50 days | 6 – 21 days | Spring, fall | 8 inches |
| Radishes | 20 – 30 days | 5 – 7 days | Spring, fall | 2 -3 inches, 8-12inches(row) |
| Carrots | 70 – 80 days | 14 – 21 days | Fall, Winter | 4inches, 12inches (row) |
| Parsnips | 100 – 120 days | 12 – 14 days | Fall, Winter | 4 inches, 18 – 24 inches (row) |
| Beetroot | 49 – 56 days | 10 – 14 days | Spring, Fall | 4 inches, 12 inches (row) |
| Potatoes | 60 – 80 days | 14 – 28 days | Spring | 12 – 15 inches 3 feet (row) |
| Tomatoes | 50 – 80 days | 5 – 10 days | Late Spring, Early Summer | 18 – 24 inches |
| Cherry Tomatoes | 55 – 65 days | 5 – 10 days | Early Spring | 6 – 12 inches |
| Bush Beans (Green) | 55 – 65 days | 8 – 16 days | Early Summer | 6, 18 inches (row) |
| Peas | 60 – 70 days | 21 – 30 days | Early Spring | 4 inches, 18 – 24 inches (row) |
| Onions | 100 – 120 days | 7 – 10 days | Early Spring | 2 – 3 inches, 12 – 15inches (row) |
| Garlic | 28 – 56 days | 7 – 14 days | Mid-autumn | 4 – 6 inches, 1 foot (row) |
| Summer Squash | 48 – 65 days | 6 – 12 days | Summer | 12inches, 3 feet (row) |
| Cucumbers | 48 – 65 days | 4 – 13 days | Summer | 12inches, 3 feet (row) |
| The 3 sisters | 90 days almost | 25 days for corn | Summer | 4 feet apart |
Lettuce
For growing lettuce, you directly sow the seeds in your garden beds. It is good to sow the seeds in early spring as cool weather won’t bother lettuce. The warm soil of the beds will help the seeds to germinate quickly. You will get healthy seedlings for transplanting too.
If you collect a single leave from the plant during harvesting, you can get at least four or five pickings from each lettuce. It is better than pulling out the whole plant.
Sow new seeds until late June or early July and you’ll get fresh homegrown leaves for most of the summer.
Leafy Greens
Greens such as spinach and kale are some awesome vegetables to grow in your garden beds. These cool-weather crops need to be planted as soon as you can get a trowel into your soil. The warm bed soil of the raised beds can give you the chance to start earlier and get several harvests before the arrival of the summer.
Besides, the leafy greens don’t like soggy roots. So, it’s better to choose soil with proper drainage for the beds of greeny leaves.
Radishes
As a beginner, you can easily go with planting radishes in your garden beds. They are one of the quickest growing vegetables. You will get to see their rosy-red shoulders within just a few weeks after sowing.
Sow the seeds from March to mid-August at regular intervals and you will get constant supplies to add them to your salads or stir-fries.
Carrots
Growing carrots in your ground garden seem quite impossible because of the stones in your soil. The stones will cause the plant roots to ‘fork’. But in a raised bed, you can ensure that the growing medium is okay for them and they are getting enough ground space.
Sow the seeds from April to early July in the loose and roc-free soil and harvest them a couple of months later.
Parsnips
Like other root vegetables, they also hate the stones in the soil. They need loose rock-free soil where they can get the space to spread out. While growing root crops, it’s important to have complete control over the soil. Raised beds can be filled with the perfect soil to suit your requirements.
It is also free of rocks, clay, and debris and protects the growth or reduces the chance of having misshapen parsnips.
Beetroot
A fresh, tender, golf-ball-size, home-grown beetroot is all that you want, right? The plants thrive in raised beds. Just sow seeds directly into the soil or compost in early April and keep moist.
Sow more seeds at two-weekly intervals until June and you’ll keep harvesting beetroot over several months.
Potatoes
Potatoes will grow greatly in your garden beds as well as you can harvest them easily in this way. These plants will get benefit from hilling soil around the shoots during their growth. In a raised bed, it is more convenient to make the soil pile and so it is easier to grow potatoes.
However, potatoes need loose and loamy soil for proper drainage. They grow the best while spreading out in the soil. The loamy soil will save the potatoes from rotting as well.
Tomatoes
Tomato plants demand good, rich soil as well as proper watering. You can achieve both by planting them in a raised bed. They don’t need deep soil to grow but because of being a large plants, their roots need enough big space to grow.
Tomato plants need space horizontally and so they are able to grow in the shallowest raised bed also. You can sow the seeds indoors in February and then depending on the weather you can transplant the seedlings outdoor and start getting the harvest in early July.
Cherry Tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes started to grow after two months of planting. Start with planting the seeds in the seedbeds and then plant them in the beds once the risk of spring frost has passed.
Provide a sturdy stake or support to the plants while planting.
Bush Beans
Bush beans are so easy to grow and ready to harvest just 50 to 60 days after seeding. They need warm soil and warm weather to grow. So you don’t need to rush for spring planting.
Sow the seed 2 inches apart from each other in the 18 inches apart rows. When the seedlings grow, plant the seedling 6 inches apart.
You can grow a rainbow of beans by planting green beans, purple beans, yellow beans, and even red varieties.
Peas
There are a few types of beans that you can grow like snow peas, sugar snap, and shell peas. Sow the seeds in early spring soon after loosening the soil about 4 to 6 weeks ago before the last expected frost.
Sow the pea seeds one or two inches apart in the double row keeping the row distance to six inches.
If your chosen variety plant needs to be staked, then you can use a pea trellis or hang netting before planting.
Onions
Onions are perfect to grow as you can fulfill the requirements of these needy plants by planting them in the beds. Onions need proper drainage and for this, they need a lot of organic matter during the long-term growing season.
By choosing onions for putting them in the raised beds, you can provide all these to your onions. You can use loose soil and add plenty of compost to the raised bed before planting onions.
Onions take almost about 100 days after sowing the seeds. So if you want them to grow faster start earlier with them and the warm soil of the raised beds will make them ready early for harvesting.
Garlic
Garlic is a ‘plant it and forget about it’ type vegetable. Tuck individual cloves in the ground beds during mid-autumn and do not harvest them until the next year’s early mid-summer. Though the plants are bothered by a few pests or diseases, they will grow well in your raised beds.
It’s better to buy garlic from your nearby local garden center than the sprayed ones from the supermarket for planting.
After planting you can add some mulch to hold the soil moisture and reduce weeds. Harvest them when half of the leaves have yellowed and hang them to cure in a dry spot for 2 weeks.
After that, they are ready for your kitchen.
Summer Squash
No matter how many summer squash plants you grow, you will always have more squash than you can eat. Even if you are planting only one plant!
Direct sow the seeds in a bed well amended with compost or manure after the last spring frost. You can harvest them once the fruits started to form and pick them often for peak quality and flavor.
For pattypan and round varieties, pick the fruits when they are 2 or 3 inches in diameter. Pick the zucchini when they are 4 to 6 inches long.
Cucumbers
The cucumber plant is a hot-weather veggie. Direct sow the seeds or seedlings in garden beds a week after the last spring frost. Provide them plenty of compost and water consistently for the highest quality cucumbers.
If you don’t have enough space, then you can try compact varieties of bush cucumbers like Pick-a-Bushel, Saladmore Bush, and Spacemaster. Just provide them a tomato cage to grow.
And in case you have a large space, then you can choose Suyu Long, Lemon, and Diva.
The Three Sisters
The combination of sweetcorn, beans, and squash are known as the three sisters. The tall sweetcorn plants give support for climbing beans, while a squash plant scrambles around their feed and suppresses the weeds as well as gives shade to the ground for moisture retention.
Spread a good layer of well-rotted horse manure over the bed before your plants go into the ground. That is all needed to give these three crops a boost.
They should then supply you with an excellent harvest of these summer crops towards the end of summer.
Best vegetable combination for raised beds
In the raised beds you are definitely going to plant more than one vegetable, right? But you can’t simply plant them in the place you like.
You can’t plant vining plants like cucumber with larger plants like tomatoes or corn as that can damage the growth of both plants. That’s it is important for you to know which plants you can plant together to grow healthy plants.
So, the following chart will help you with that. Go ahead and read it!
| Type of Vegetable | Friends | Enemies |
|---|---|---|
| Beans | Beets, carrots, corn, cucumbers, peas, radishes | Garlic, onions |
| Beets | Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, bush beans, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, kohlrabi, onions | Charlock, field mustard, pole beans |
| Carrots | Beans, lettuce, onions, peas, peppers, tomatoes | Dill |
| Corn | Climbing beans, cucumber, peas, pumpkins, squash, zucchini | Tomatoes |
| Onions | Cabbage, carrots, chard, lettuce, peppers, tomatoes | Beans, peas |
| Potatoes | Basil, beans, celery, corn, garlic, horseradish, lettuce, marigolds, onions, peas, radishes, spinach | Asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, cucumbers, eggplant, kohlrabi, peppers, squash, tomatoes |
| Radishes | Beets, cabbage, carrots, chives, cucumbers, kale, lettuce, spinach, squash | Hyssops |
| Squash | Beans, corn, dill, nasturtiums, peas, radishes | Potatoes |
| Tomatoes | Asparagus, carrots, celery, onions, parsley, peppers | Corn, dill, kohlrabi, potatoes |
| Zucchini | Beans, corn, dill, garlic, nasturtiums, oregano, peas, radishes, spinach | Potatoes and pumpkin |
Few Last words for you
You can plant almost every type of vegetable in the raised beds but out of them, some are the best. Here I have tried to suggest to you almost every best vegetable for your raised beds. You can choose a wide variety of them too.
Also, be cautious while paring them in your beds. Hope this was helpful for you. Happy gardening!