Are age related problems stopping you from enjoying your gardening? The sore back from too much bending, sore knees from too much kneeling or just the long recovery from aches and pains after a stint in the garden. I know these problems first hand, as a baby boomer I had to find a solution and I did! Bring your garden to you by making use of raised beds!

Whether you're in the age group that needs to start thinking about adapting your methods or you're wheelchair bound, all you need is to build some raised beds about 3 feet wide by about 2 feet high and any length that will fit in your garden. Simply built with a timber frame, they get rid of the need to kneel and severely reduce the amount of bending, so saving your back.

What other benefits do you get from this form of gardening? Let's see… there's the removal of soil problems, greatly improved pest and weed control, the above mentioned ease of access and the increase in your crop harvest.

Any plants that love well-drained soil can benefit from being grown in raised beds. You don't have to raise just vegetables. You can also easily grow herbs, fruits, and flowers in raised beds and make your job easier.

Your garden beds will need less water because you can plant your crops a lot closer together than you would normally. Then there's the added advantage of less weeds because of less room to grow and shady conditions.

Planting closer means larger crop yields, but raised beds will also give you the ability to start growing seeds outside earlier in the season and you'll enjoy a longer harvesting season. In simple terms, you'll get a larger crop from the area than you would normally expect.

Any sort of adverse soil conditions you currently have in your garden are eliminated because you're free to use good friable rich loam in your new beds. Overcoming this stumbling block gives raised bed gardening the ability to turn a drab garden into an oasis of thriving plant life.

Another great benefit of raised bed gardening is the fact that the gardener doesn't walk on the soil in which the plants are growing. This helps prevent the soil from being packed down, so the roots can grow through the soil more readily.

Since you'll be filling your raised beds with good fresh soil, the odds of infecting your plants with any disease is far less and pests are much easier to manage in a limited area. Again this adds to the overall increase in your harvest and the quality of your crops.