Raised beds, pots & harvestable vegetables
Grow More in Your Backyard Garden
Practical calculators, planting tools, and guides for raised beds, containers, and vegetable gardens.
Popular garden calculators
Get cubic yards, bag counts, and plant counts without a spreadsheet.
Raised bed gardening
Depth, soil volume, mixes, and whether a frame is worth it compared with in-ground rows.
Vegetable gardening
Crop pages with spacing, sun, water, and harvest timing — tomatoes, peppers, beans, kale, onions, herbs, and more.
Container gardening
Plastic, ceramic, and fabric pots in 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10 gallons — plus which vegetables fit each size.
Soil & compost
What to put in the box, how much compost to top-dress, and how to read a soil bag.
Watering
Raised beds dry faster than in-ground soil. Schedule from soil moisture, crop, and weather — not a gallon formula.
Seeds & seed starting
Seed starting, germination, and transplanting — when to start indoors and how to harden off.
Garden tools
Pruners, trellis, garden carts, hoses, and drip gear — buying criteria without fake reviews.
Pest & plant problems
Photos, controls, and product types for common garden pests — plus blossom-end rot.
Featured guides
Short answers with tables and worked examples — not a blog feed.
- How Deep Should a Raised Bed Be?Most backyard vegetable beds work well at 10–12 inches of soil. Go deeper for carrots and large fruiting crops, and know that depth is only useful if you actually fill the frame.
- How Much Soil Does a Raised Bed Need?Multiply inside length × width × fill height (all in feet) to get cubic feet. Divide by 27 for cubic yards. A 4×8 bed filled 12 inches deep needs 32 cubic feet, about 1.2 yards.
- Hugelkultur in Raised BedsHugelkultur puts free woody waste under the mix so you purchase less soil. It does not have to be logs. In a 12-inch 4×8 bed, 3 inches of packed twigs and leaves skips about 6 bags. A 24-inch bed can skip about half the fill — often more than $150 if bags cost around $8 each.
- Growing Vegetables in ContainersPots split two ways: what they are made of, and how many gallons they hold. Material changes watering and heat. Gallons change which plant will actually finish a crop. Fill them with potting mix, not garden soil.
- Best Soil Mix for Raised BedsA reliable raised-bed mix is mostly mineral soil plus plenty of finished compost, with enough drainage that water does not sit around roots. There is no universal bag that fits every climate and crop.
- How Often to Water Raised BedsWater when the top 1–2 inches of soil are dry for most established vegetables, not on a rigid everyday schedule. Raised beds usually need water more often than in-ground gardens.
- How Far Apart to Plant TomatoesGive determinate tomatoes about 18–24 inches. Give indeterminate plants 24–36 inches unless you prune and trellis aggressively. Crowding is a disease and airflow problem, not a yield trick.
- How to Fertilize a Raised Bed GardenStart with compost and a soil test when you can. Use fertilizer to correct a known need, not as a weekly habit. Product labels and test results override generic internet rates.
- How to Start Vegetable Seeds IndoorsMost fruiting vegetables want a head start indoors so they have enough warm weeks outdoors. Use a light seed mix, real light, and transplant before the plants starve in a tiny cell.
- Aphids on Vegetable PlantsAphids cluster on soft tips and leaf undersides. A strong water spray and patience for beneficial insects handle light pressure. Broad insecticides often make the next outbreak worse.
- Blossom-End Rot on Tomatoes and PeppersBlossom-end rot is a dark, leathery patch on the flower end of tomato or pepper fruit. It is a calcium uptake problem tied closely to uneven soil moisture — not a disease you catch from a neighbor.
Product guides
Buying criteria for later retailer links. No fake reviews, prices, or test claims.
Why this site exists
Most gardening articles bury the number you actually need — cubic yards of soil, plants in a 4×8 bed, fertilizer ounces — inside a story. HarvestBench is a utility for food gardens: calculators first, then the guides that explain when those numbers break. It is written for US homeowners growing vegetables they can harvest, not as a personal blog.