DIY – Building Raised Bed Garden Plots – Part 1
Filed Under: Do It Yourself, Organic Gardening on July 2, 2009
This year, we decided to build a raised bed garden plot for growing in our extreme back yard where the soil is sand and gravel and used to be a parking area for equipment. The dirt itself would require a lot of work and replacement to become able to support anything but the hardiest of weeds, so our choice was to either excavate and replace with topsoil or build on top of it and put in soil that way.
When the choice comes down to running a shovel or a hammer, I always choose the Irish Toolbox. I don’t know about you, but shoveling is near the bottom of the barrel in my manual labor enjoyment.
I went through several designs in my head and on paper before I finally hit on the one that I thought would make best use of the materials at hand and create what we wanted in garden beds.
My first design was for two boxes at roughly 4 feet square, but Mark at the hardware store informed me that his treated 2×6 boards come in ten foot lengths, so I’d be wasting 2-feet per board.
Next thought was for 5×5, but one of the rules of a raised bed is that it shouldn’t be too far to stretch to get to the middle from any side you can work the garden. A five foot bed would mean a two and a half foot stretch from any side to reach the middle. I could probably do okay with that, but my wife is only five feet one inches tall, so that’s not gonna happen.
To avoid any excuses for me to be the only one doing any work in the garden, I had to come up with a new design. So I went with four feet by six feet. With ten foot boards, this meant I could make one cut and have the short sides and the long run out of one board.
I started digging holes for the posts to anchor it to the ground. This is where I made my first mistake, but before I get into that, let me make a note about these posts and what they’re for.
I reclaimed some cedar 4-inch posts from a fence a neighbor had torn down. The posts (one seen here, uncut on the ground) were six feet in length and I cut them into two foot lengths. I used an electric chainsaw, since my circular saw isn’t long enough and I’d rather not use a handsaw on such tough wood—especially with so many to cut. Cedar is a prime choice because it’s extremely rot resistant. These posts had been in the ground three years and you’d never guess it by looking at them.
The post holes were dug with a post-hole digger and, even though it was done by hand, didn’t take long because they’re only about 14-inches deep. In the bottom, I poured in about an inch (or so) of gravel before setting in the post. No concrete or anything is needed. These posts are merely to keep the garden box from moving and to provide an anchor to attach the side boards to.
Now, this next photo will show my first major mistake. The first rule in carpentry is layout. Layout includes properly aligning things, squaring up what needs to be square, etc. When doing layout on the ground like this, a good carpenter will usually put small stakes into the ground and run string lines. This way, the string can be measured, made square, etc. The strings and lines will be a set distance from where the actual building takes place. For this box, had I used string lines, I would have laid the string about 3 inches from where the box is to be.
Had I used string lines.
Since I didn’t use string lines, and just ”eyeballed it,” the box came out kind of crooked. Actually, when it was done, it was shaped more like a drift boat than a box This meant that the boards didn’t reach the posts either. Since bowing the box means the distance is longer…
Now at this point, I was pretty..well..unhappy. I hadn’t set more than the first four posts yet (there were to be six) and I already knew it wasn’t going to work. I made up some new words, recycled some old ones, and considered my options as my face became redder than my hair. I decided that what I needed was to not be building a garden box right then.
So I went to the hardware store.
As a side note, where I live the hardware store is 20 miles away and one state over (Nebraska). The owner, Mike, is a nice guy and his store is one of those old-fashioned types where you walk in and survey the recent tornado that’s gone through the place. There are shelves, probably, but most stuff isn’t really on them. It’s just kind of all over the place. The key is, you tell Mike what you’re after, talk politics for half an hour while he finds what you want, and then pay for it and wave goodbye.
I needed lumber and corner brackets. So we climbed into my pickup truck and drove over to Mike’s house, where he keeps his lumber in the barn. Yes, that’s right, he doesn’t keep lumber in his store. It’s in his barn.
Amazingly, his barn is nothing like his store. Everything is organized, stacked, and easy to see and get to. Thinking on it, I guess this has a lot to do with the proximity of Mike’s barn to his house (where his wife lives) versus his store (where his wife isn’t). Makes sense.
So it turns out that Mike got a new shipment of these 2×6 boards I wanted. Except they’re in eight foot lengths, not ten. Woops. He’d sold out the ten footers and had to order more, but his supplier only had eight footers on hand. There ya go.
So I took the eights and we loaded them into my pickup. Next to his barn is a trailer full of scrap. He’d recently been tearing out the insides of a house to remodel it (Mike’s also a contractor). I asked him what was in the trailer and he said it was just scrap and if I wanted any, go ahead since it would end up in the fireplace or the dump anyway. Inside the trailer were some great 2×4 pieces in various lengths (always good to have) and the corner brackets I needed (most of them, anyway). Score!
Back at the store, I also inquired about PVC pipe, the other corner brackets, some 3-inch outdoor nails, etc. We talked about President Obama and how stupid bailouts are and how much rain we might get this year while he found the items. All told, I spent less than $100 at Mike’s store. On the way home, I stopped at the feed and grain store and bought a roll of chicken wire (2-foot by fifty foot roll). The total cost of this garden box would be $120 plus my labor putting it together.
Click here to continue on to Part 2 of this 2-part series.
[Family unfriendly bits removed]
Ha!
Gaping.