I decided to look for the best books for raised bed vegetable gardening at Amazon.com to share with you, my readers, online friends, buddies, and friends to be. To judge the best books on raised bed gardening, I started with the highest rated books on vegetable gardening, rather than with a list of raised bed gardening books. From the highly rated vegetable gardening books I picked out the ones that use the raised bed method. Why? For some of these books it’s not obvious until you delve into them that they are recommending raised bed gardening.
In case there is any confusion, when you hear the term raised bed you might automatically think of a timber-framed garden bed sitting above the regular soil level. Although raised bed gardening usually uses these kind of beds, it doesn’t always. In fact it is not strictly necessary and you’ll find that the focus in these books is on the vegetable growing rather than the planning and construction of things like timber walls for raised beds.
Herewith, the top 4 books for getting you growing vegetables by the raised bed method, as rated by readers, at Amazon.com.
#1 Square Foot Gardening
Square Foot Gardening and All New Square Foot Gardening describe a method developed by Mel Bartholomew which is an alternative to row planting of vegetables. All New Square Foot Gardening is a book I keep coming across people talking about using when I visit blogs. The author says he provides “a system that is so simple and easy that anyone can enjoy a weed-free garden all year and produce a continuous harvest.” If you’ve put off getting started in vegetable gardening, this could be the book for you. To see inside either of these books take the links to Amazon.com where you can look inside.
#2 The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible
The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible – as the word Bible in the title suggests, this book covers much more than the method for raised bed gardening. The focus is on high yields with less work and topics covered include: how to make your garden self-sufficient; healthy soil; healthy plants; and composting. There is an A-Z of vegetables and herbs and a focus on organic methods. It would be a good comprehensive choice for a beginner who needs a detailed overview on vegetable gardening using the raised bed method. Detailed overview? Is that an oxymoron?
#3 How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits
How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits on Less Land Than You Can Imagine covers not only how to grow vegetables, but it puts gardening in the wider context of sustainability, ecology, and planning for long-term success in the garden.
#4 Cubed Foot Gardening
Cubed Foot Gardening is about putting you in charge of the garden, rather than the other way around. It would be a good choice for you if you’ve tried gardening, and you are sure it’s something you want to do, but you are looking for higher yields with less work. This book also covers how to build inexpensive, timber-framed, raised beds – 8 of the 170 pages are devoted to this.
When choosing books for the list I looked not only at the Amazon.com star ratings, but also at the number of reviews, and the consistency of reviews. I read both positive and negative reviews to make sure that they contained good information.
Every book in this list allows you to look inside. Before I buy a book that I’ve never seen before I really need to know not only the contents, but the style of writing and the manner in which the information is presented. I’m guessing you might feel the same way. When you are looking for a great book on vegetable gardening I’m pretty sure you’ll find one, or more, of the books on this list to be suitable. I hope you do 
Links to Amazon.com support Loving Nature’s Garden.
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I was thinking about trying the square foot gardening book – it looks pretty cool. I’m not sure if I even have space for that right now though (I am mostly container gardening this year)
LittlePeopleWealth, you ask a good question. I looked around the internet and also searched inside the Square Foot Gardening book at Amazon.com. I read about people having 4 foot by 4 foot gardens, in the book it mentions a 3 foot by 3 foot garden. I imagine you could go even smaller though because you probably don’t need more than one foot of width. Maybe some of my readers will comment too – one of them may have this book.
We put out the classic 4×4 foot boxes this year. I have a friend that did 2×8 foot because that’s what fit in her yard. Really, the only limit to how small you can go is how many plants you want. If you only want 4 tomato plants, you could do a 1×4 foot garden and still get great results.
I used the wrong google account to comment above and it isn’t linked to my profile. Got to figure out a way to fix that! ~~Tiffany
Hi Tiffany, thanks for the confirmation on my understanding of size/space and square-foot gardening. I look forward to following the updates on your garden.