There are many pros to raised garden beds, the soil drains better, the plants are less susceptible to bacteria, its more convenient to work in raised beds because of their height, but really the selling point for us was that it was elevated and our puppy couldn't get into the plants!
One of the cons of raised beds is there isn't as much room for plants to trail as there is when they are planted in the ground. In an effort to make due with the space we had, we decided to place a few pieced of lattice in the raised beds and try to train some of our plants to grow up the sides instead of growing out.
So far, I think it's working! Here is the green bean side of the lattice.
And this is the cucumber side of the lattice.
Aside from green beans and cucumbers, we've planted a small variety of veggies this year since it was the first year using raised beds.
Handy Husband loves peppers so the garden is stocked full of peppers. Banana pepper, hot banana peppers, jalapeño peppers, and green peppers. Sadly I don't have very many pictures of them because as soon as they are ready to be picked, he will pick them and eat them straight from the garden :).
We've also planted spinach, carrots, onions,
broccoli,
tomatoes, and watermelon.
The hardest decision I have to make when gardening is what to do with a big green tomato.
Let is grow and ripen or pick it and fry it :).
I decided to let this guy grow since he's one of the first ones. However, as soon as there are more we will be having some fried green tomatoes for dinner thats for sure :)
Happy gardening, Y'all!
A side note for other gardeners: We have refrained from using any pesticides in the garden this year, our "green" solution was to plant a marigold in each corner of both beds and this has worked pretty well. It hasn't kept the lady bugs away, but for the most part we haven't had much of a pest problem.
