Building a Raised Bed

Raised beds are wonderful tools for any gardener, but perhaps especially for a vegetable gardener. Some highlights:

• Weed control is a piece of cake
• Soil temperature is all around warmer, meaning earlier planting, later harvests, and perennials that fair better during the winter months than their ground planted counterparts
• Good drainage so roots don't get water logged
• High quality soil (especially compared to the clay we usually have)
• Limited space so any soil amendments (e.g. compost, fertilizer) are more contained and less expensive

For these reasons and many others, this past weekend Josh and I added about 75 square feet of raised bed space to our side yard on the south side of our house. We chose this location because a) there was really nothing noteworthy there to begin with and b) because it's on the south side of the house, the beds will get great light all day long (the sun travels basically over the top of the beds from east to west). Because the space is almost 25 feet long, we chose to do three separate but connected beds with the middle bed taller for a tiered effect. For the small beds, we used eight inch boards and for the tall twelve inch. All of our materials cost slightly less than $200.

Raised Bed Plan

Materials

Lumber

For our beds, we used pressure treated wood. Pressure treating is a chemical process which slows down the rate at which lumber will rot when exposed to the elements. Some people don't like to use pressure treated wood for beds where food will be grown because the chemicals can be hazardous. After our own research, we decided that we were comfortable using pressure treated wood in our vegetable beds, but I note this as a suggestion for those building raised beds to do their own research.

In the end, we used:

• (5) two inch by eight inch by eight foot boards ("two-by-eights") cut into...
• (4) 6 foot boards
• (2) 4 foot boards
• (3) two inch by twelve inch by eight foot boards ("two-by-twelves") cut into...
• (2) 7 foot boards
• (2) 4 foot boards
• (3) four inch by four inch by four foot posts ("four-by-fours") cut into...
• (8) 10 inch pieces
• (4) 12 inch pieces

Note: You can by these materials in almost any length (4 feet, 6 feet, 12 feet, etc.). For our measurements, eight feet made the most sense (also our Ford Focus couldn't really haul much more).

Other  Supplies

• 3 inch exterior grade screws
• Pea gravel (13-15 half cubic foot bags)



Ready to Raise a Bed

• Top soil (25-30 forty pound bags)
• Weed cloth (*optional)
• Landscaping pins (*if using weed cloth)

Tools

• Circular saw (or have the store cut the wood)
• Power drill (plus extension cord if not cordless)
• Phillips head drill bit
• Counter sink drill bit (*optional, but definitely handy)
• Stiff garden rake
• Trowel
• Post digger (but a bulb planter also works!)
• Pitch fork
• Level (at least 2-feet long) 
• Large square

And so began our two-day project. Check back tomorrow for construction details...