How to Make Raised Garden Beds
It’s been many years since my husband and I planted a garden of any kind. After starting a new health journey a year ago, I have made much more effort to include more vegetables in my daily diet.
Because we live in a rural area and it’s not convenient to run to the grocery store every time I need veggies, I decided it would be a good idea to plant a vegetable garden.
Also, with the more recent shortage of food in our country, I feel having our own garden is an even smarter idea to have healthy food readily available.
After doing some research, I decided raised garden beds would be a great option for us.
First of all, I like the idea of having more control over the type of soil we plant it.
But more than that, I love that it’s easier to keep weeds out of a raised garden bed.
Here’s the supplies I used to make my bed:
- (6) Red Pine Fence Pickets (5/8″ x 5.5″ x 6″)
- Exterior Screws 1 1/2″
- Wood Support Pieces to assemble the box: 2 x 2 or 2 x 3, etc. (I used scrap wood we had on hand cut into 12″ long pieces
- landscape fabric
- Cordless drill with bit for exterior screws
- top soil and garden soil
Directions:
The first thing you will need to do is cut off the pointed ends of the pickets so that you have a nice straight edge to work with on each piece.
Build the long sides of the garden box first. Using your 12″ support pieces, attach two of the fence pickets together to form a side. Use a support piece on each end and in the middle.
After you’ve built the two long sides, you’re ready to make the shorter sides of the box.
Cut two of the fence pickets in half. This will give you the two pieces you need on each end to attach the long sides together. This is the easy part as you will just attach it to the supports already in place.
Tip: A second set of hands to hold the ends together is helpful to get that first corner together.
And just like that, you have built your first box!
If you’re just building one box, at this point you can go ahead and lay your landscape fabric in the bottom. followed by your soil and plants.
But I wanted several beds and decided to create a pretty garden area that I could walk into.
My husband helped me build the rest of the beds to save on time and then we laid out the boxes in a “U” shape to form a garden area that I could also walk into and be able to reach each bed.
Working together, we rolled out our landscape fabric under the boxes to hold the soil in place. We also carried the landscape fabric through the middle where we will be walking into the middle of the beds. This will help keep the weeds out of the walking area. (I waited to trim off the extra length after the soil was added to the boxes).
Reminder: If you’re using a pressure treated wood, be sure to cover the interior sides of your garden box with a heavy duty plastic so the toxic chemicals from the wood will not leach into your garden bed and into the food.
When I went to purchase garden soil, they didn’t have enough of the Black Kow that I wanted to use.
I bought all I could carry in my SUV and my husband purchased more at another local store.
There are calculators on The Home Depot website to help you figure out how much soil you will need.
To save on money, we filled each bed halfway with top soil that my husband was able to get for free from a friend from work. We made sure to pull out any sticks or weeds from the soil as we filled the beds.
It took a couple of hours, but we shoveled it out of the pickup truck into the beds. At least we got in a good workout, right? LOL! Then we were ready to add the good stuff!
Because we ended up with three different types of garden soil, we just mixed them all together in the beds.
Then it was time to plant!
Tomato sandwiches are a “must” in the south during the hot summer months, so planting tomatoes was first on the list.
We also planted squash, zucchini, okra, peppers, and even tried a few brussels sprout seeds, although it’s not really the best time to plant them. They came up , though, so we will see!
In addition, we also planted marigolds to help with pollination and to ward off insects.
As you can see in the photo below, we decided to also fence in this area to keep the garden safe from wildlife out here: deer, rabbits, gopher tortoises, etc. At a later date, I’ll add pea gravel to the middle of the garden area to walk on, but pine straw will do for now.
I absolutely love how our garden area turned out! Early every morning and late in the evening, we love to walk out there to see how much everything has grown.
We’ve already got our first little tomato growing and we couldn’t be more excited…lol 🙂
I’ll share more about how we built the fence around the garden on a budget as well. But for now, I hope I’ve inspired you to try making your very own DIY raised garden bed box.
If you don’t need veggies, you could also plant flowers, herbs, or fruit.
