a day in the life of a latvian mom

I got a question recently — why raised beds?

The answer is simple: heavy clay soil.

Our entire property is covered in it. If I want to plant something directly in the ground, I need to dig a hole by hand, bring in compost or better soil, fill the hole, and only then plant something. That might work for a shrub or a single plant, but not for a proper vegetable garden.

And honestly… I’m not fit enough to fight clay soil every single day.

So last year we tried something simple first — pallet collars.

Each collar cost around 7 euros (about 8 USD or 6 GBP), and a few of them we even got for free. I didn’t treat or protect the wood because the goal wasn’t to build a perfect forever garden. I just wanted something fast, affordable, and easy to set up to see whether we actually liked gardening this way.

That small kitchen garden quickly grew into something bigger… and somehow biggest part of it turned into a flower garden too.

But the pallet collars worked surprisingly well.

Last summer was extremely wet, and the raised beds were almost effortless. I think I watered only once or twice during the whole season, apart from the very beginning when the seedlings were still tiny.

This year I realized I wanted more growing space — especially for carrots, beets, and other vegetables/beans.

So we decided to build proper long raised beds.

Underneath was complete clay. Heavy, sticky, compact clay everywhere.

We filled the beds with what we had available. First came leftover soil from digging the pond. Probably not the richest soil in nutrients, but at least it’s black instead of clay. Then we added composted horse and cow manure. In the picture on right you can see the raised bed’s compost vc hole in ground:

Will this setup work perfectly? I honestly don’t know yet. I still need at least one full season before I can properly judge the results.

But I already love one thing about raised beds. They are ready when I am.

I can plant whenever I want without waiting for a tractor to turn the soil, make furrows, or deal with heavy clay first.

For us, that already feels like a huge improvement. And independence!

Ilze