Build Your Own Raised Garden Beds
Photo from The Seed Guy
For space saving and high yields, it’s hard to beat a vegetable garden grown in raised beds. Raised beds can improve production as well as save space, time, and money. They also are the perfect solution for… dealing with difficult soils such as heavy clay and can improve your garden’s appearance and accessibility.
You will want to fill a raised bed with a customized soil-and-compost blend. Drainage is built into the bed walls, which hold the soil in place. Greater exposure to the sun warms the bed and extends the growing season. Plants can be spaced closely together, so yields go up, water-use efficiency is maximized, and weeds are crowded out. Finally, raising the soil level by even a foot reduces the back-bending effort needed for jobs such as planting, weeding and harvesting. You can even build them up to 30″ inches or so to accommodate a Family member that is in a wheelchair.
A raised bed is pretty much a bottomless frame set into a shallow trench. The sides can be almost any durable building material, including rock, brick, concrete and interlocking blocks. The most common material for raised beds is lumber. Just steer clear of wood preserved with toxins. Avoid creosote-treated railroad ties, and instead use naturally rot-resistant cedar or redwood.
MATERIALS FOR A RAISED BED:
One 6-foot-long 4-by-4
Six 8-foot-long 2-by-6s
One 10-foot-long 1-inch PVC pipe
Two 10-foot-long ½-inch PVC pipes
32 3½-inch #14 wood screws and 16 ½-inch #8 wood screws
One 4- by 10-foot roll of ¼-inch-mesh hardware cloth
Eight 1-inch galvanized tube straps (semicircular brackets)
32 cubic feet (1 1/5 cu. yd.) soil mix (look for combination of topsoil, compost, and potting soil). Craigslist is a good place to look for Compost and Topsoil. Or, if you raise livestock, you already have all you need.
With a table or power saw, cut the 4-by-4 into four 16-inch-tall corner posts. Cut two of the 2-by-6s in half. Cut the 1-inch PVC pipe into four 12-inch-long pieces and the ½-inch PVC pipes into 6-foot-long pieces. Assemble pieces on a hard, flat surface.
Build bed upside down. Set a 4-foot 2-by-6 on its thin edge on pavement and place a 16-inch post at one end. Secure post with two 3½-inch screws. Repeat at other end of board. Repeat with other short board. Join short sides with an 8-foot board; and secure with two screws. Add other long side. Add second layer of 2-by-6s.
Get some help to flip the bed right side up. Move it into position in the yard, marking with a trowel each corner post’s location. Move the bed aside; dig a 5- to 6-inch-deep hole for each post. Put the bed back into place, with posts in holes; fill around posts with soil.
Rake the soil at the bottom of the bed to level it, and then tamp it smooth. Line the bed with hardware cloth to keep out gophers and moles; trim the cloth with shears to fit around corner posts.
To hold hoops for bird netting or row covers, attach four 12-inch pieces of 1-inch PVC pipe inside the bed: On the long sides, space pipes 4 feet apart, 2 feet from each end; screw on two tube straps to secure each pipe. Finally, you can fill the bed with a planting mix of topsoil, compost, and potting soil; rake it smooth, and moisten it down with the hose.
Source: Danny Look
For all the heirloom seeds you need to complete your raised garden bed see the Seed Guy at the link below
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