If you used landscape fabric to kill off the grass under the bed, cut it out of the bottom of the bed, but leave the fabric under the sides of the bed and the surrounding walk way. This will help keep grass and weeds from encroaching on the bed from outside the bed.
We initially left the landscaping fabric under our first bed, thinking it would prevent grass and weeds from growing up into the bed. However, we discovered that weeds weren't that much of a problem and the fabric was also preventing beneficial earthworms from entering the beds; by cutting out the fabric from the bottom of the bed, earthworms are able to pass through and aerate the soil.
The next step is even more important: the bottom of the bed must be lined with quarter-inch or half-inch galvanized hardware cloth and it must be stapled to the inside boards of the bed.
We did this with the first and second sets of raised beds we constructed, but when we built the raised beds in the picture above, we decided to skip this step, thinking it was overkill. Because that bed is in shade much of the day, Cindy used a mylar mulch to increase the amount of light her green beans received. Later that summer, she noticed that the bean plants seemed to be dying; when she inspected them, she discovered that gophers had tunneled under the bed and thus under the panels and chewed off the plants at the roots. The mylar mulch had provided an excellent cover for their covert activities and the lack of hardware cloth on the bottom of the bed allowed them to do it.
That meant she had to dig all the soil out of the entire bed and retrofit it with the hardware cloth, not an easy task.
We won't skip that step again.
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