No much of a carpenter but saved about $800 vs the kit from home Depot and wife is super happy.... Now to fill with some dirt or ... something idk that's her job

Gonna spend about 4 to fill it with dirt lol. Looks good

Put logs and sticks in the bottom half. So you aren’t filling with all dirt.


I recommend doing no dig beds. Raised beds are nice for strawberries though.

Look good. I have been wanting to make a fence out of raised beds around my wife's main garden for years. But the garden is just ball parking 120'X 60' and that is a lot of compost to come up with. It would complicate tilling with the tractor as well. so Have not done it.

I did see on a resale/ Recycle add some used gard rails for sale and thought that would make great raised beds. No worries about chemicals in treated wood geting into the soil .

Before you fill it with dirt you should measure halfway across each side and put vertical 2x6's to keep your side boards from bowing out. Believe me the dirt has a LOT of outward push on that length of side boards. Build it 2X as strong as you think is enough or as the plans show. You will be glad you did. We have 4 of these I made and we love them.

Her job? You just as well go buy the dirt or drop a bucket behind the barge and get some good Mississippi River dirt.

Weed burner and char the wood. It's a Japanese process to preserve the wood and it will last longer. Then set it on gravel. It will help the water drain away and won't rot the bottom.

Agreed

We do all of our gardening in raised beds.

X3 on what everyone else has said. The last couple I built I put a layer of logs in the bottom. Worked out well and saved a lot of dirt.

Nice job on those Wolfie!

Moosetrot

Yeah y'all se was talking about adding rocks ont the bottom the sticks and longs then many some hry then dirt

Yeah glad you said that I meant to add some more but ran out out of 2x4"

Gravel doesn't have to be in the bed, just under the wood. Inch or two.

Yeah someone mentioned someone about treated wood. These are pressure tread 2x4's and 1x6"s so should I add some plastic sheeting orrr ?

Burying logs, branches, leaves and other organic debris and growing on top of it is called Hugelkultur. Your raised beds look great. I use raised beds I made on the cheap out of 55 gallon barrels and IBC totes. I fill them most of the way with raw manure, of all sorts and use composted manure and soil for the last 12 inches or so to grow in. I top the raised beds off during the Winter with rabbit manure. I rob them out for soil for the plants I sell and refill them too.

You can get free arborist chips from Chip Drop and the power companies. I got 30 some loads since early this year. Once composted, the chips make excellent soil. They make good mulch too. Burying the entire area in 8" or more of wood chips is often called the Back to Eden method based on the books and films of the same name.

Keith

Honesty that's up to you and what you are comfortable with. Plastic sounds like a mess to deal with when it breaks down.

filling the bottom with logs will help it hold moisture and as they break down you just add more compost on top.

Seems it'd be wiser to ask how to build something, before you build it, than to ask how can I fix what I've already built. lol

I garden, but it's cheaper and more time efficient to buy groceries at the store.

I have tried using chip drop for 2 years. No takers yet. I imagine its cause of location and lack of arborist work in a more rural area.
I have access to lots of wood and I make some of my own wood chips from woodworking along with the fact I have a pto driven Woodchipper. I could use ALOT more tho. But no access to animal manure.

All this to say not all materials are easily available.

Myself I made raised beds from 2 x 12,s. I wuldn't use wood again. It seems to wick alot of moisture out of the ground in the beds. The beds dry out much faster than surrounding ground. I'd use metal or plastic. Keith's idea of using 55 gallon drums or plastic totes is a very good one.

I'm in process of converting to raised beds as current garden is on a layer of very thin soil over clay hard pan. Had to replant some things 4X this spring as they kept drowning out in heavy rain. Stuff won't grow in standing water. Had some experience with raised bed years ago when I built a 4 x 8 x bed out of 2 x 6 lumber on driveway, as there was no other place at that property. Could not believe it produced what it did. There is a filler known as Mel's mix, which is equal parts of compost, peat moss and vermiculite. Very hard to come by all those in quantity. If having to backfill with sticks and logs, bet may be taller than needs to be. Theory is those logs will rot and hold water....so needs to be a rot prone wood like elm, etc. Roots going into the soil below is not all bad. Unless you really want it up off the ground to keep from bending over, in most areas there is no need to go much higher than a foot or so. (2 layers of 2 x 6 lumber). Three layers would be huge. Beds can also be made from concrete blocks. Those are more or less permanent, but takes a lot of them to make a big bed. That many have to be delivered by a truck.

The design Wolfie was given is not a particularly good one. Allows one to easily reach all the sides, but is also very wasteful in terms of lumber. The linear feet of sidewall is almost double what same bed area would have been with a 4 sided square or a simple rectangle. More bed for same money. The key hole in the middle will also fill up with weeds and grass that has to be dealt with.

4" is about as wide as you want to go, as becomes tough to reach in farther from the side. Most can do the 2' reach from either side. Can be as long as you want. If needs supplemental water, use soaker hose or drip tape. Just leave it in place. Filler I''m using is combination of waste hay and chicken droppings and horse manure from two places down the road. Also am running live branches trimmed from trees thru a wood chipper. Dead branches converted to biochar in 55 gallon drum. Activated biochar part of bed mix too. Should be about 10% of the mix by volume.

Can't think of anything bad to say So i'll commend your efforts yes you need some cross bracing Don't know how wide it is but looks like its wide enough fr a bale of straw i'd use that to fill it up You can drap plastic sheeting down the sides if you're worried about chemicals as the straw rots down get a trappers auger to mix it in and add alittle dirt every year
Its a flower bed Wolfie not the Washington monument

LOL Jeff.

Veggie / herd bed actually lol....but what can I say like thing to make nice things from time to time especially when it comes to building stuff for the wife

So did a bunch of reading and apparently all the chemicals they use to treat this NEW wood are pretty safe for veggies for the most part the old treatment however

Yup. The wood treatment is poison for bugs, for rot, and for you and Mrs Wolfie when it leaches into the soil. Not a new issue. Google it. What was the box store kit made from? If treated wood did it include a liner?

Use untreated for the bracing. I like Jeff's suggestion about straw. Wood chips will suck the nitrogen out of the soil as they decompose. Straw might too, I don't know.

line it with plastic or it won't last much longer than it took to build it.

If you're worried about chemicals leaching out of the wood into the soil, being absorbed by the plants and up into the produce, using a safe, outdoor, latex paint is an option. The paint will occasionally have to be touched up.

Keith

Another option if you can find someone with a sawmill is to make them out of rot resistant woods like black locust. For that use, it can be rough cut. Even the side slabs could be used.

I like your idea, just have a problem with it not lasting very long.
I used concrete blocks to build my raised beds.
They don't look as sharp , but work very well.
I plant radishes , onions , carrots , or whatever you use a lot of in the holes in the blocks.
Drive rebar down through every other block, to give them more strength.
You could cover the beds with wood, or concrete siding to give it a more appealing look.
I just painted mine.

https://getbusygardening.com/concrete-block-raised-bed/


You can build them as high as you want.