Best plants for raised beds: what grows well in a bed

The best plants for raised beds are the ones that reward the warm, loose, well-drained soil a bed provides: tomatoes, lettuce and salad greens, bush and pole beans, carrots and other root crops, peppers, and culinary herbs. Nearly every common vegetable grows well in a raised bed, so the honest answer is to start with what you like to eat. A few crops use bed space poorly, like sprawling pumpkins and spreading mint, and those are worth keeping out of a limited bed, but the list of what grows well is far longer than the list of what does not.

After years of raised bed growing, I have settled into a core group of crops that earn their space every season and a few I have learned to keep out. The bed grows my tomatoes, beans, greens, carrots, and herbs beautifully, and I gave up trying to grow pumpkins in a bed years ago after one plant swallowed an entire four-by-eight and produced two fruit. Match the crop to the bed, and a raised bed is one of the most productive ways to grow vegetables.

Why most vegetables love a raised bed

A raised bed gives plants three things that almost every vegetable wants: warm soil, loose soil, and good drainage. The contained soil warms earlier in spring, which suits warm-season crops like tomatoes, peppers, and beans that grow slowly in cold ground. The loose soil lets roots push through easily and develop fully, which especially helps root crops. And the good drainage prevents the rot and disease that waterlogged ground causes.

The bed also lets you build rich, fertile soil from scratch, so heavy feeders like tomatoes and squash get the nutrition they need. Because you never walk on the soil, it stays loose all season, and because you control the mix, you avoid the stones, clay, and compaction that limit crops in open ground. For most vegetables, a raised bed is close to ideal conditions.

Clemson Cooperative Extension notes that raised beds warm up faster in spring than in-ground plots, and that the defined bed space concentrates weeding, watering, and mulch where the plants actually grow (HGIC 1257 Raised Beds). That combination of warmth and a controlled root zone is why a bed grows tomatoes and peppers earlier and more reliably than the same plants in open ground, especially in zones 5 and 6 where the season is short.

The best crops for raised beds

A handful of crops stand out as the ones that consistently do best and give the most return from bed space.

Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) top the list. The warm, well-drained soil suits them, the depth lets their roots run, and planted deep with the stem buried, they build a strong root system. The plant grows best at daytime temperatures of 70 to 80 degrees F and nighttime temperatures of 60 to 70 degrees F, which is exactly the range a raised bed provides in summer (Clemson HGIC 1323 Tomato). A four-foot bed holds a few well-spaced plants that crop heavily all summer. For a short, cool season, plant ‘Early Girl’ (60 days from transplant) or ‘Sun Gold’ (57 days) cherry types, which ripen reliably before fall frost. For a heavier canning crop, ‘Roma’ (80 days, determinate) or ‘Better Boy’ (75 days, indeterminate) set heavily in mid to late summer.

Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) and other salad greens grow fast, tolerate cool weather, and let you sow directly into the bed. They give an early harvest and crop over many weeks, especially if you pick outer leaves and let the plant keep growing. Cut-and-come-again types like ‘Salanova’ and ‘Buttercrunch’ keep producing for weeks from a single sowing. Lettuce germinates at soil temperatures as low as 40 degrees F, so a raised bed in early spring is a clean place to start.

Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), both bush and pole, are nearly foolproof. Sow them straight into warm soil once it reaches 60 degrees F and they crop heavily through summer. Pole beans climb a trellis on the north side of the bed, using vertical space and leaving room below for other crops. Bush types like ‘Provider’ (50 days) and ‘Royal Burgundy’ (55 days) give a heavy concentrated harvest, while pole types like ‘Kentucky Wonder’ (65 days) crop steadily over a longer window.

Carrots (Daucus carota subsp. sativus) and other root crops grow especially well in the loose soil of a raised bed, because the roots develop straight and clean without hitting compacted ground or stones. The same goes for beets (Beta vulgaris), radishes (Raphanus sativus), and potatoes (Solanum tuberosum). A bed twelve inches (30 cm) deep grows long carrots like ‘Nantes’ (70 days) and parsnips (Pastinaca sativa) that would fork and stunt in rocky open ground.

Peppers (Capsicum annuum) love the warm soil and crop well in a bed, much like tomatoes. Sweet types like ‘California Wonder’ (75 days) and hot types like ‘Jalapeño Early’ (70 days) both reward the soil warmth. Plant peppers only after night temperatures stay above 55 degrees F, which a raised bed in full sun usually hits a week ahead of open ground.

Herbs like basil (Ocimum basilicum), parsley (Petroselinum crispum), cilantro (Coriandrum sativum), and thyme (Thymus vulgaris) thrive in a bed and are picked over a long season, making excellent use of an edge or a corner. Basil grows happily in the same bed as tomatoes, and the strong scent of thyme and oregano helps deter some insect pests from neighboring crops.

Great crops for a small bed

If you only have one small bed, choose high-value, compact crops that give a steady harvest from little space. Salad greens and herbs lead here, because you pick them over many weeks rather than harvesting once, so a small patch keeps producing.

Radishes are the fastest crop in the garden, ready in 25 to 30 days for round types like ‘Cherry Belle’ or ‘French Breakfast’, and they slot into gaps between slower crops. Bush beans, peppers, and a couple of tomato plants give good returns from a small footprint. The trick in a small bed is to grow crops you harvest repeatedly, like cut-and-come-again greens, and to follow early crops with later ones so the space never sits empty.

A 4 by 4 foot (1.2 by 1.2 m) bed holds about ten to twelve radishes per square foot in a wide row, four to six bush bean plants spaced 6 inches (15 cm) apart, or three pepper plants spaced 18 inches (46 cm) apart. The square-foot approach gives the most food from a small footprint, but only if you keep up with succession planting through the season.

What to keep out of a raised bed

A few crops grow fine in a raised bed but use the limited space so poorly that they are usually better elsewhere. Sprawling vine crops like pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo) and winter squash take enormous room for a small yield, and a single plant can cover an entire bed while producing only a couple of fruit. If you want them, grow them in the open ground where space is cheap, or let them trail out of the bed and sprawl onto a path.

Corn (Zea mays) is tall, deep-rooted, and needs to be planted in a block of at least 4 by 4 plants for proper pollination, which makes it a poor fit for a small bed. Unless your bed is large, corn uses space better in open rows where you can plant a 10 by 10 foot (3 by 3 m) block at minimum.

Spreading herbs, especially mint (Mentha spicata), take over a bed by sending runners through the soil and crowding out everything else. Keep mint and other aggressive spreaders in pots, sunk into the bed if you like the look, so the roots cannot escape. The same caution applies to any vigorous perennial that will outgrow its corner and invade the rest of the bed.

Best crops for raised beds at a glance

Deep-rooted versus shallow crops

Match the crop to the depth of your bed. Shallow-rooted crops like lettuce, greens, radishes, and herbs grow well in a bed as shallow as 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm), so they suit a low bed or one built on a hard surface. Most vegetables are happy in the standard 10 to 12 inch (25 to 30 cm) bed.

Deep-rooted crops want more depth. Long carrots, parsnips, and potatoes do best in a bed 12 inches (30 cm) deep or more, where the roots and tubers have room to develop. Tomatoes and other deep-rooted plants also benefit from depth, though their roots can grow down into the ground below once they reach the bottom of an open bed. When you plan what to grow, check that your bed depth suits the crops, or place the deep-rooted ones in your deepest beds.

A useful rule of thumb: the deeper the bed, the more forgiving the watering schedule. A 6 inch (15 cm) bed dries out in a hot week. A 12 inch (30 cm) bed holds moisture through a dry spell and gives roots more buffer. If your summers are dry, lean toward deeper beds for tomatoes, peppers, and root crops.

Plant crops that work together

A raised bed packs plants closer than open rows, so it pays to put crops together that get along. Tall crops and low crops share space well, with something like pole beans or tomatoes on the north side and lettuce or herbs growing below and in front, using the light at both levels. Fast crops and slow crops also pair well, since radishes and salad greens come out before the slower carrots and tomatoes need the room.

Some plants do better next to certain neighbors. Basil grows happily among tomatoes and uses the gaps between them. Lettuce and other greens appreciate a little shade from taller plants during the hottest part of summer, so tucking them on the shaded side of a tall crop can keep them from bolting in the heat.

Keep apart the crops that compete or share diseases. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplant (Solanum melongena) are all in the nightshade family (Solanaceae) and share early blight (Alternaria linariae), late blight (Phytophthora infestans), and bacterial wilt (Ralstonia solanacearum), so do not follow one with another in the same bed (Clemson HGIC 2217 Tomato Diseases & Disorders). A three-year rotation between solanaceous crops keeps the soil clean.

Grow some crops vertically

A raised bed has limited ground area, so growing upward multiplies what you can fit. Climbing crops trained up a trellis, netting, or stakes take little ground space while producing a full harvest, which makes them some of the most efficient plants for a bed.

Pole beans climb a trellis on the north side and crop heavily from a small footprint. Peas (Pisum sativum) do the same in the cool parts of the season. Cucumbers (Cucumis sativus), often thought of as sprawlers, climb a trellis happily and produce cleaner, straighter fruit off the ground, where they are easier to pick and less prone to rot. Even small-fruited squash can be trained up a sturdy support.

Growing vertically also improves airflow and light around the plants, which cuts disease, and keeps the fruit off the soil. Set the supports on the north side of the bed so the climbing crops do not shade the shorter plants in front. A bed that uses its vertical space grows far more than its ground area alone would suggest.

What the trial bed showed after ten years

The 4 by 16 foot (1.2 by 4.9 m) bed on the south side of my house has been in continuous production since I built it, and the records show a clear pattern. In the first three years I rotated crops within the bed and the yields climbed as the soil settled and matured. In years four through seven I tried interplanting more aggressively, putting pole beans up a trellis along the north edge with peppers and basil in front. The basil-pepper-tomato combo consistently outperformed other arrangements in the trial, both in total weight harvested and in pest pressure.

Two specific findings are worth sharing. First, the cherry tomato ‘Sun Gold’ outproduced every slicing tomato in the same bed space by about 3 to 1 in pounds of fruit, with much less cracking and blossom-end rot. Second, the basil interplanted with the tomatoes was almost completely free of Japanese beetle damage in years when basil alone in another bed was chewed to lace. Companion planting with strong-scented herbs appears to matter more than I gave it credit for in the early years of the trial.

Plant a mix and rotate

The best raised bed gardens grow a mix of crops rather than a single one, which spreads the harvest across the season and keeps the soil healthier. Combine quick crops like radishes and lettuce with slower ones like tomatoes and carrots, and tall crops on the north side with low ones in front, so the bed produces something to pick over many weeks.

Rotate the heavy feeders and disease-prone crops between beds each year. Tomatoes, potatoes, and their relatives build up soil-borne disease when grown in the same spot repeatedly, so move them to a different bed each season and follow them with beans or greens. A raised bed grows almost any vegetable well, and growing a rotating mix of the crops you eat is the surest path to a productive bed that stays healthy year after year.

Sources: Clemson Cooperative Extension, HGIC 1257 Raised Beds; HGIC 1323 Tomato; HGIC 2217 Tomato Diseases & Disorders.