I use old paver bricks for my raised beds. They retain heat well, don't attract wasps, and I found them all for free from torn down old-timey bridges with brick roads.
@@nicolebrown230 took me years, but I was commuting by bicycle to work and I found numerous places where they had knocked down bridges or dug up the road where they used to be made of brick pavers. I have hundreds of them. I brought them home one and two at a time on my bike.
"Leave room between the raised beds for a wheelbarrow." OOOPs....I did not think of that. Too late now... I think I better SUBSCRIBE before I mess up again!
I am forced to change my entire garden to raised beds this year. My first 4 beds were built with landscaping timbers that are placed in layers so they are easily moved. I looked on Facebook Marketplace and found 1x4x4ft boards for $1 each if I bought 100+. That allowed me to build 6 more beds that are 4 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft. All of my beds are 2 ft tall. I am disabled and this allows me to use my wheelchair to work my garden when I need it. We're using our raised beds to place a perimeter around our mobile home lot, a sort of fence, if you will. We are going to be trying out the self-watering beds that you demonstrated at the Green Thumb Nursery with our new beds. It won't work out for the old beds. We also have 5 old tires that we are converting to growing areas instead of adding them to the land fill.The Marketplace is an excellent place to look for lumber for raised beds. I will be adding a video very soon, showing how we moved the raised beds and refilled them. We will be starting to build the new ones as soon as the weather cooperates.
Great video! I have 13 beds and am in the process of building the 14th. As a short person, I built 3’ wide raised beds, and they work well for me. I also have a sitting garden cart, so I’m able to work my 16” tall beds easily. I wish I’d made my paths 4’ instead of 3’. My beds are a mix of pressure treated and non-treated. I’ll be interested in how long the non-treated last.
I ran into this video and was very glad I did. I've had a garden for years but this year got serious with it and saw my yields increase. This video highlights a lot of the things I ran into and things to consider so that gardening does not become a headache or another chore that you end up spending a lot of money on. Great tips!!
I have 13 raised beds 4x8 and 5x8 all made from Trex, going on 20 yrs, best thing we ever did, also husband piped water to each bed individually so I can control watering based upon plant, and stop watering when a crop is done.
Another decision for height of a bed is the soil underneath. If your ground is a heavy clay or something that doesn't drain well, or I should say has poor drainage then a taller raised bed will probably be helpful in having good drainage and water holding capacity without your plants drowning. You may even need to have some places where water can drain depending on how heavy the clay is. I can tell you that regenerative farmers (working directly in the soil) use either a 36" or 42" width bed because 48" is hard to deal with for people growing veg for a living. So, instead of going all the way out to 48" maybe cut that back to 42" if you're a pretty good height (not short) or if you're a shorter person stick with 36". Having said that if you have a taller bed and you are taller THEN a 48" bed isn't so painful trying to reach into. 36" is a good gap between beds, 42" if you're a bigger person who may want to sit down or don't like to feel crowded. Regenerative farmers get by with smaller pathways, but they also don't have wood frames they can collide with and are used to working in tighter places, but you have to be able to get a wheelbarrow through that space. Good info THANKS!
Thank you for all the tips. I am doing a small raised bed garden with my 6yr old grandson this year. He has become very interested in gardening. Time to share my knowledge. 😊 These tips will help a lot.
Great INFORMATION for a noob like me 1/2 yr behind me now unto the fall (8b) part of things .. with only 4 (4x4) and 4 (2x4) beds your information will help greatly. THANK YOU!!!
New sub! I am enjoying your videos, my only disadvantage is husband left and I'm 59 but doing all the hard labor with the weight of wood, cutting, etc.. it's amazing what I've been able to do even though my hands hurt a lot. It's definitely a necessity though!
Same life here! I agree with doing raised metal beds which are easy to assemble, arrange and manage. RU-vid is my BFF and great creators like Jill fill my life with joy! You will get there!!
i liked how she highlighted that you dont have to build all the reaised bed you need to fill out the empty space in your backyard. im pretty sure some of us do feel that we need to fill it out right away. But if we are in a budget patience do go a long way.
Quick and easy cheap border for slightly to medium raised beds: BROWN CARTON and branches. If you do not get your hands on lumber quickly , or do not have time or money to get it perfect right away. Or if you happen to get some soil quickly but do not yet have a plan. - It is possible to take BROWN CARTON (think packaging of household appliances, or TVs), cut off stripes and fold them over so the material is double. Lets say 50 cm wide stripes (so 25 cm when they have been folded in half lengthwise). 50 cm are approx 20 inches. It helps to prepare the folding line by slightly ! cutting into the cardboard (with a carpet knife, even the blade of scissors work). The "border can be higher as well. It looks much neater if you have a long wooden board or straight piece of metall that you can use as "ruler" when you cut the stripes, so they are are all even stripes that have the same height and have a nice even folding edge (which is on the top so very visible). That can create a "border" for a slightly to medium high raised bed - and hold soil in place in an rectangular (or even a round) shape. You need branches rammed into the ground to hold the carton in a vertical position, the branches will carry the weight, the carton is the wall that prevents the soil from falling away. Some of those branches might surprise you by sprouting (red currant for instance, we had some at hand from cutting the bushes). The border stripes have to overlap at the end, 10 cm = 4 inches is more than enough (and a supporting branch should be nearby. Rain will not weaken the carton much. The cardboard border will last at least for one year (we are in a temperate climate zone with winters and had extended periods of rain this year). During that time you can make your first experiences with gardening at that place and at that height, make a plan where to put your permanent beds and how high you want them, source affordable materials or paint your wooden boards with lenseed oil. Or get your hands on old lumber, bricks, pallets, or make your own metal beds etc. Or wait for the end of saison sales for raised beds. It is also a good solution if you want to set up quickly a space for some winter gardening (hardy frost resistant salads, kale), but are not sure if the bed will stay at that place and the weather does not allow for much outside building activities. Or if you get a chance to get some soil quickly, but do not yet have a plan where to use it. If you have your technique (and tools) down to cut your stripes (2 persons make the job much easier) and to prepare your sticks (we use a machete) that border is built very quickly. The carton is bleached by the sun over time , but as long as it can dry out from time to time it will hold up. If you use cardboard as weed suppressing sheets (so it is used in a horizontal position not vertical) it MUST be covered by a good layer of soil, compost, mulch - then and only then it will rot quickly. If it is moist all the time, the rainworms and other parts of soil life will process it quickly. Cardboard at the surface (or with too little mulch on it) has a surpising ability to dry out if there is wind or sun. It is astonishing how well these carton borders hold up against the elements and the pressure of the soil (well the branches are holding most of the weight). Even laying on the ground after weeks of rain carton pieces will be fairly intact. Part of the carton border can be "anchored" in the soil - of course there it will rot faster, it might not even be necessary to dig it into the soil. (we did because one onf the strawberry beds has a slope - we assumed there would be a bottom gap and soil might be washed out - but in hingsight that likely was not necessary). Carton (especially in double layers that are in a vertical position) is surprisingly robust if it can dry up from time to time. Even if moist soil is on one side, or when it gets wet when you water regularily the plants from top etc. The stripes (the border - it replaces a border made of wood or other hard materials) have to be fixed with branches that are rammed into the earth. I think we used 20 cm = 8 - 9 inch distance, it looks neater with less distance between the branches, but you can chose wider distances if you are in a hurry. You can add branches later if that is necessary for stability or optics). Our branches are not very deep in the underground, you have to test it. 4 inches = 10 cm might be enough depending on your underground (if you are next to a stone border and tarmac that is certainly enough, with sandy underground you might need to ram them deeper into the soil. Just do a test run over a short distance, fill up with soil, water the soil and see what happens. If the bed area is on a slope you need more stability of course. The branches we use are not massive either. You can cut them to the same visible height - but only at the end (if you cut them to the same lenght, you would have to ram them into the underground in the exactely same manner and that is more work, easier to cut them off when you are done). The branches can be all at the outside - when the setup is finished there is the soil, then the cardboard "wall" next to it and in direct contact witht he soil, then come the branches as supporting structure). Or the branches are alternating at the outside and insde of the carton. In that case the carton stripe would be "woven" in between the sticks. So you start with putting most of your soil in a rectangular shape. it is easier because when you have to add a LOT of soil later you have to take care to not tear down your border. But when working with the carton and the branches you can leave a little gap and fill that up later. I think weaving the stripes in after the branches have been rammed into the ground could be more tricky. I am not sure about the optics long term, and do not think it adds stability. We have all the branches outside and they hold up well. Like all good provisories - this solution is still in place and we did not yet change it for a more permanent solution. But one year of gardening with it was helpful, we changed our plans. What we will grow there - most likely we will get a slug proof metall fence there - and before that we will add more soil. It looks better, if the stripes end at the same height (same for the branches), are neatly folded (in a straight line) and if the visible side of the carton is brown with no print on it. Ideally it is made from the same (type of) carton, so the brown will fade in the same manner. Large brown cartons from household appliances work well for that purpose. And use brown, not white or any other color it blends in better with a natural environment. We used carton without a glossy surface. (those will not rot and it is generally advised not to use such cartons for composting). At some point you wilreplace the cartons stripes and will need to compost them. Btw. if cartons gets wet it becomes much easier to remove adhesive tape, labels - it is even possible to remove a glossy top layer (that is relevant is you use carton sheets for weed suppressing, I do not recommend it for optical reasons. The quick and easy (and cheap) solution buys you at least 12 months to source your materials, to get clear on the final position where you want your beds, to paint your wooden boards with lenseed oil (which takes at least 1 month to fully cure), to check out how other folks build their raised beds. And to wait for good weather if you can only build outside ;)
in long beds you can place one or two even step stones in the middle for a shortcut - around them there should be plants that grow not too high. You lose a little planting space, but that way you can split the distance in half and do not always have to go around. It is only a solution for agile gardeners of course and not for fairly high raised beds. Your plants will grow right to the stones, so you have to be able to step over them and "land" at the stone or stones only - the larger surface of a stone or brick distributes the weight. In some of my strawberry beds the stumps of cut down bushes / trees serve that purpose. We did not have the machines / tools to pull them out, so we integrated them into the "design". Never mind with all the abuse they got (and we intentionally abused them so they would root quicker - ALL the stumps started to sprout again. Nutrients and more water. We will try to get cuttings from them (and then clean off the stumps they cannot make that effort several times) and plant the clones into the hedge (once the Thuja hedge is partially removed). I tend to be stingy with the space I allowed for paths. Those beds are against walls so I made only small (and rather narrow) inroads, the back row along the wall is occupied with perennials - herbs, berries (heat loving plants that benefit from the wall in their back) while the lower growing strawberries are in front of them.
I have two raised beds that I made, one wood, the other corrugated steel. Both and about 2 1/2' tall and both have issues with the soil drying out faster than ground soil. The steel bed drys out very fast because the steel gets very hot from the sun. I made domes for both so I can grow crops into the fall and early spring.
another good reason to have beds on the ground is that plants "communicate" with eachother underground and send nutrients where they are needed; much like a community. having a raised bed isolated those plant roots from the network of other plant roots underground.
Thank you for this video! I needed the tip about not planting perennial plant/herbs with annual plants but to plant the perennials in a container to contain them from spreading. I also enjoyed seeing your beautiful chickens in the chicken row. Thank you again & I hope your back is feeling better.
I always enjoy your videos and have learned so much from watching. Really appreciated the tip on annual and perennial planting. Thank you so much and God bless you!
On filling new beds.. I suggest filling as full as your budget allows the 1st year. Knowing that it may take you a few years to totally fill multiple beds because of both volume and yearly settling and topping.
at construction sites it is really easy to get REAL soil for free. sometimes they will even be willing to drop off a heap if you pay them a little money and your property is nearby and accessible for vehicles. Sure normally the quality top soil is kept aside for later landscaping or sold (but still at much, much better prices than in the store - and REAL soil is also better). If you are lucky you can even get quality top soil if the people that get a pool or dig out a foundation for a cabin have no use for it and just want it gone quickly. Moreover what you get in the store is more or less "compost" - sometimes with peet sometimes that is replaced by coconut coire or quickly composted woody materials. They add manure (chicken, Guano) or artificial fertilizer in form of minerals. SOIL contains a lot of rock that was ground down over the eons. That component is missing from the stuff sold as "soil" in the shops. Unreformed soil from deeper layers does not contain that much organic materials or complex, long carbon rich molecules (= humus) - but that is going to change if you let it sit for a few years in your compost heap or in a raised bed. Soil life (it invades from the underground) does it for you, you just have to provide the right conditions and they will do the magic. Free construction site soil can be sandy or VERY dense (loamy or clay like), it is most of the time not good quality gardening soil - but it can be in a few years. It is also heavier than the same volume of store bought "soil" or compost. We sourced painters buckets with the lids * - they are very stable and have well fitting lids. they are also well suited to transport soil or even manure, so you can organize your own transport, even if you only have a small car or do not need that much. Such soil is not yet humus rich garden soil but an excellent starting material. And very well suited to fill the deeper layers in a raised bed (in a mix with compost, wooden yet unrotted material, fresh composting materials, manure). if the soil is very dense, it should be broken up. in the middle layers it can be mixed with gardening soil, or homemade compost, or the stuff sold as soil from the stores. Such dense soils hold water very well - that is why you should break up the lumps especially if you have clay soil. Or it might act as a barrier. The same happened to us when we added organic cow manure close to the bottom of big planing pots. In India they add such manure to paint (to make it more sticky). We learned our lesson, no more manure into pots no matter how large they are. And if you add dense / sticky manure to a raised bed or compost heap it should be broken up or spread out. Then the water can flow around the stick material, and soil life will eat it from the outside and transform it. The higher a bed sticks out of the underground the more watering it needs when it is hot (compared to beds that are level with the underground). So some clay / loamy soil (even it is not not yet reformed) in the deeper layers of your raised bed will serve well to store water. Very well rotted wood also acts like a sponge, but if you add some logs that might take a few years. The rainworms and other critters and fungi will transform wood and unreformed soil in the deeper layers over the years. The mixing and breaking up of dense soil makes sure that water can penetrate and that there is enough air for soil life. Just do not leave pockets. Dense soils have a lot of nutrients (they are so dense because of the ground down rock material = minerals), so it is excellent raw material. * Tip: try to get such buckets the day the paint was used and wash them immediately. And inspect them before you pick them up, you do not want buckets with unused paint - we picked up stacks of buckets and many had leftover paint in them. Be mindful what kind of paint or other materials were in them, odorless indoor paint is good. They can be used as planting pots (holes drilled in the bottom, the lid serves as saucer. The plastic is polyethylen or polypropylen that is O.K. for grwoing food. The lids are enough for watering, but when it rains a lot they will overflow quicker than regular saucers. Next year I will try to paint them with lensseed oil with pigrments (food grade) in order to protect them from UV radiation, and also for optical reasons. Or maybe I will buy quality lenseed paint. Lenseed oil is "elastic" - the paint you can buy in the stores is not food grade and it would be chipped off over time. Jute fabric tied around buckets could also look nice.
My raised beds are four feet wide to maximize growing space in a small garden, but I've found that one problem with that width is that no one makes hoops for it. All the hoops for row covers are for two- or three-foot wide beds. I have to make my own out of wire, and they don't like to stand straight.
That’s a great point! I made my own out of PVC. They didn’t look great so I bought some nice ones from Gardener’s Supply. But, I have to double them up to span the four feet. Thank you for pointing that out!
Drainage is a a big one, you are able to monitor and manage the watering of your garden. More importantly I'd say is temperature though, a raised bed warms up faster and can be tented to stay warm longer which gives you a longer growing season.
My shallow beds are 8" deep using cinder block, which don't decompose or leach copper into the soil. They are not mortared, which leaves them easy to move and reconfigure as wanted. They are heavy enough that they stay in place.
The short beds will be a swimming pool during a rainy season . Just like a lawn you need proper soil depth for drainage . Otherwise you’re going to have root rot
It is surprising how easy it is to "forget" about the paths when you create a new space for growing. caught up in the middle of the work. Or to forget about the path with for a wheel barrow - if that is necessary.
Thank you so much for your insightful and beautiful information. I'm a new gardener trying to grow in 5 gallon buckets (food grade) and loved your comments about the wood choices.. I mean I was freaked out by using only cedar and the $$$.. Thank you for all the tips!
I have a several questions. I have had a lot of trouble with termites - have you had any issues with them? I am afraid to use even treated lumber because I don't want to draw them to my garden. Also, I was thinking of transitioning from in ground gardening to no till - basically raised beds without the borders. Is the process the same as far as the plant spacing? Lastly, do you have to top off the soil in each bed every year?
We are looking to get started in raised beds. We really haven’t had a garden since 1990. I am intrigued with the self wicking approach to raised gardens. I didn’t see that in these raised gardens. Do you recommend using the self wicking method? Thanks and all the best from north Texas.
Good point on the row spacing, versus in-row spacing. Never made sense to me that you could plant something 6" from another but needed 18" between the next row. Now at least I understand why that measurement is there... and it confirms my long held belief that I could ignore those values.
Thank you so much. I am only in the planning stages, so tips are served best before mistakes are made. I have worked with wood in other contexts and thus know warpage would be an issue. From what I can tell, when you built your beds (some are warping), you did not build-in hardware to prevent warpage. Did you consider such an option and choose against it? How old is your most-warped bed? Anti-warping steps in the design and build stages would add to the cost. I wonder if it is worth that cost. Also, it seems that you did not seal your bed walls before filling the boxes. Do you now wish you had done so? Thanks again.
And I’m not sure what hardware you’re referring to, but I just built them the way my husband showed me and recommended so I didn’t put more thought than that. I’d much rather spend my energy on the planting part. 😊
I agree today's pressure treated lumber is ok. btw Jill of greater concern for us; how do you safely address "Fire" ants around or literally in raised beds and or underneath weed fabric. Note; Fire ants seem to especially love to build mounds at the base of Okra stalks/TY
@@thebeginnersgarden TY 4 your reply. "Fire" ant mounds around here easily reach 18 inches high and a circumference of 24 inches wide when left to thrive and are literally life threatening to pets livestock and people. Seems no one knows of a "natural" means of eradication. I'm impressed with your gardening knowledge and felt if anyone had a solution for the fire ant dilemma indeed you would. TY 4 your time!
Except for Corn, you should ALWAYS follow the between row spacing as going to close with corn will result in the ears not being fully pollinated with kernels.
Good point. I’ve found that growing corn in raised beds hasn’t yielded for me anyway so I stick with growing them in the ground. But I always thought it was due to quantity limitations. I didn’t realize it could be that they were too close together for pollination. Thank you for that insight.
Do you find that you need less overall footprint to get equal yield as in ground/standard gardening? I ask because it would seem so considering you can use the square foot method on many crops....although it seems like even though it's said that you can grow cabbage and such by the square foot method, crops like that would crowd each other.
The link should be in the description. Garden in Minutes is a partner of mine and you can get $10 off a purchase of $100 or more with my code JILL10. I can’t recall the price exactly because they sent them to me to try but you can check prices at the link.
Great tips! I have a 48’ long raised bed. I have trouble with water pressure for the length of the bed in my irrigation system. Is there anywhere you’d recommend I look for help designing an irrigation system that keeps pressure for the length of the bed? Thanks for this video! Great job!
