How to make raised garden beds out of 4x4 pressure treated lumber 

Thank you for showing this step by step. Really helpful.

The beds are looking really nice and you guys have surely been very busy, putting in all of those beds.

Thanks for the tutorial -- very informative. Cheers!

Thanks for education to make risebed. Greetings one hobby. Good job

Really nice beds Peter. Yeah, you'll have a big investment up front, but they will last decades. Nice job!

Those are very good looking, and very solid beds, which indeed should last a fair length of time. But I do see two potential drawbacks. One is that here in my climate, which is in Jackson, MS- Zone 8(b)- we get up to 80 inches of rain per year. That's a HUGE amount of exposure to water. In just 5 years, even treated lumber gets drenched by about 400 inches of water! EVERYTHING made of any type wood, treated or not, therefore rots fast in our semi-tropical HOT and WET environment. Some treated wood may last longer than others, but a 5 to 10 year life span is about it for treated lumber in Mississippi. The modern treatments for lumber simply are not as strong against moisture as the old...and far less safe...treatments. Two is the cost of these beds is NOT CHEAP at all. While all markets are different, here using Southern yellow pine treated lumber, the lumber, screws, aggregate, and tax will run about $200 per bed. A dozen raised beds will therefore cost $2,400 just for the materials. Your labor obviously is FREE but it is worth something. That $2,400 cost only gets them built. It does not fill them with soil. Beds of that size will take a LOT of soil. If you do organic gardening as I do, the costs is much higher for a growing mix which is NOT DIRT OR SOIL at all, but usually a mixture of perlite, peat moss, and compost, along with probably some trace minerals. I calculate your will need about 300 gallons of growing mix PER BED, or a total of 3,600 gallons to fill up a dozen beds. Depending on the price of bulk growing mix, you may need to spend about $2,000 more dollars to get the beds filled and ready to plant. None of that includes at woods chips you have everywhere in your garden paths, the t posts you use for stakes, the wire mesh you use for a growing trellis, assorted mounting hardware, or any type of perimeter garden fencing to keep out wild animals. All total a garden set up like yours will likely cost a bare minimum of $5,000 and could run as high as $10,000 depending on if you installed a top quality perimeter fence around the entire garden. You will get a lot of veggies out of your garden and they should taste fantastic. But the cost of your set up amortized over the useful life span is going to result in every vegetable you grow costing a whopping amount of money. It would be much cheaper, not to mention less labor intensive use of your time, to just go buy your veggies from a local farmer's market or through a CSA. Anyway, don't let me discourage your efforts. You will have one of the best gardens money can buy, that's for sure. I just want others who view this video to be sure they count the costs before they decide they want to duplicate what you show in your videos. Finally, I do compliment you as these beds are absolutely among the finest I have seen on any videos on the internet. Keep up the good work.

Love the project. For a 4x8 garden, would boards need to be cut at 8 feet long and 4 feet long to create the beds?

Nice work. I was considering a similar build. Do you happen to know if there is any danger of the pressure treatment chemicals leaching into the soil and contaminating the plants?

Hi , if im making 8 ft by 4ft bed . What will be the size of the 4 by 4s.

Even modern Pressure Treated lumber is unsafe for gardens. The heavy metal leaching is very dangerous. You should take down bothe this video and those beds before you cause irreversible liver damage to those you love