This weekend will be the first one that truly feels like summer. To inaugurate the festivities, my friends and I are embarking on one of many treks to a lakeside cabin where they’ve mastered the art of raised bed gardens atop their poor quality soil. To better understand the process, I’ve done the research and asked the tough questions, and I now feel honored to impart the wisdom of green thumbs across the globe on how to make your very own raised bed garden for vegetables, herbs and flowers.

Step 1: Where to Place Your Raised Bed Garden

Ideally, your vegetables, herbs, and sun-thirsty flowers should be receiving approximately eight hours of sunlight everyday. To choose the proper location, make sure the direct sun is present and the ground it lies on is as flat as possible. Keep the bed conveniently located near your tools and a water source – like a hose or lake – for easy maintenance.

Step 2: The Green Rule: Dimensions and Depth

The best raised bed gardens are accessible from every side so that tending does not require stepping into the bed. This may require the guess-and-check work of dimensions and inseam, or employing the standard rule of about 4’ wide and 6” deep. Most vegetables grow well at this depth, though the deeper the better (10” is ideal) for rooted carrots or parsnips.

Step 3: Prepare and Construct

How much prep you plan for stems from the depth of your raised garden box, as well as the planning ahead for what types of plants and flowers you desire to keep. Use newspaper, landscape fabric, or cardboard to cover and smother it the base, then put your soil on top. Make sure the soil is loose enough for the plants to sit deep comfortably. Once the depth is prepared, use rot-resistant wood (like cedar or a composite) to lay two-by-six pieces down. Make a simple butt joint at each corner, then drill and screw the corners together with galvanized screws.

Step 4: Leveling Off the Frames

Important to the water and soil efficiency, leveling off the frames is a crucial step to take so that water does not sit or run off at different levels of the raised garden bed. If part of the frame seems off, remove or add soil beneath it until the frame becomes level again. Once level, finish it off with a combination of quality topsoil, compost, and rotted manure.

With these four easy steps, you can begin to garden in your raised garden bed using the top notch soil and controlled variables that keep your vegetables, herbs, and flowers healthy and budding all summer long.