First of all, you must decide how big your raised bed garden should be. While it is best to not make it more than 4 feet wide – so you can easily water plants – you can make it as long as you wish. The most popular design is usually 4×4, but it really can be any length you choose.

Use lumber to build the frame. Most people use 2×6 lumber for shallow-root vegetables. If you want to grow larger vegetables like corn or tomatoes, you’ll need 2×12 boards, so your soil can be at least 10 inches deep.

Opinion varies on whether or not you should use treated lumber. Since untreated lumber will only take a few years to rot, you will soon need to build a new bed. If you use treated wood, it has a small potential to leech toxic chemicals into the soil which might be picked up by your plants and passed to you.

Untreated wood is definitely safer. But treated wood is very convenient, and many scientists claim the chances of anyone actually being harmed by the small amount of chemicals that might leech into the soil would be minuscule. This is indeed a personal choice.

Have the store cut your lumber for you. The ends of the boards must be completely smooth, so that your bed won’t leak once it is built. You will probably have a hard time doing this yourself. A handsaw or circular saw will not do a good job.

You can use three 4-inch ribbed deck nails to connect the joints. Those are the best type of deck nails to use to avoid the bed falling apart.

You should assemble the frame on a flat, level surface, not directly in the garden if you can help it. Your frame will be much sturdier if it’s assembled on your deck or driveway. It is going to be very heavy, so make sure you have some help when it is time to move it to the garden.

Leave at least two or three feet between boxes. You will need space to move around when you take care of your plants. Be sure to choose a good location right from the start, because once they’re filled with soil, they’d be impossible to move without emptying them!

Dig or till the soil if you wish, but know that it is not necessary to do. The plants do perfectly fine in the 6-12 inches of soil inside the box. If your soil is rich in nutrients, the plants shouldn’t need to root past 12 inches.

Your soil should be top quality. Don’t trust commercial potting soil as being of good quality. You will probably need to add extra nutrients. Rich organic materials such as home compost, manure compost and other organic add-ons can really make your soil of superb quality.

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Water gardening is just like any other type of gardening, because you need to make sure the conditions are stable. You need to take account of everything, from making sure you are using the correct soil and planting in the right location. Yet you also have to figure in other possibilities and special conditions, making this form of gardening different from others.

Aside from those mentioned above, you have to figure in the water’s temperature, the depth of the water and the safety of the plants and animals in the winter months. As for the soil, a heavy and loamy soil would be perfect for growing aquatic plants.

The usual potting mixes are not going to cut it, because their light consistency isn’t ideal for preserving the plants’ required nutrients. The soil you plant your aquatics in should be damp. You’ll fill your container about 2/3 full of the soil.

Water lilies should have their rhizomes placed so the growing tip is pointed to the center at a bit of an angle. The growing tip is like a potato because it usually has eyes. The water lilies would grow across the diameter of the container if you plant them this way.

The tip of the rhizome should be rising just above the soil level – take note of this when covering it up with soil. Plant tropical water lilies in the center of the container – these are different from your conventional water lilies.

Lotuses are also planted in the center, but their rhizomes are very delicate and should be handled carefully. When planting emergent and submerged plants, pot them by placing some soil into the pot, placing the plant in the center, then covering the roots with even more soil.

Once they’ve been potted, you need to cover the soil with about 1/2 inch of small gravel. By doing this, you are ensuring that the soil doesn’t get eroded and doesn’t cloud up your water. Once you’ve properly potted your plants, they should be submerged to the correct depth.

One technique you can use is by placing bricks under the containers to submerge them properly. Do your homework by finding out the correct planting and submersion instructions for the plant of your choice. Using the earlier water lily example, you can grow them anywhere from 12 to 18 inches above the container’s top part.

The pot could be placed at a shallower depth at first, and lowered later as the plant grows. It’s important to give the pond enough sun, because the container can be placed deeper with more sunlight. Tropical water lilies need to be at 12 inches depth if possible, but they can grow in only 6 to 8 inches if they have to.

Lotus plants only need about 4 to 6 inches of water over the top, and emergent plants generally only need a couple of inches of water over them. You can adjust the height of the various plants by placing bricks or inverted pots underneath.

Be careful, because you could just end up overfertilizing your pond. In specific, we would be referring to an algae problem. A granular fertilizer or slow release tablets would be ideal for water plants. Popular fertilizer types for water plants include 20-10-5, 5-10-5, 10-6-4 and 12-8-8.

Fertilize your plants every month from April to August. Tablet fertilizer is generally the easiest to use. All you have to do is place the tablets underneath the soil. Most aquatic plants won’t do very well in cold weather, so they need to be over-wintered.

Over-wintering is done as a preventive action to make sure that the ice and snow doesn’t kill your plants. For shallow ponds, you can simply do this by taking the plants inside before the winter snow starts falling.

You can keep your plants dormant by keeping their temperature between freezing temperature and 50 degrees. Prepare your plants for the spring by ensuring that the roots stay moist somehow. An alternative would be to remove the rhizomes from the pots and keep the plants stored in plastic bags with moist sphagnum moss. For tropical water lilies, keep them stored in a well-lighted aquarium tank at a temperature of about 68 to 70 degrees.

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