Minibed Gardening 7 Year Update & How To Make The Bed Frames 

Thank you for sharing your method. I am starting my first season with mini beds. Looking forward to many seasons of gardening. with this method. I am in my 78th season myself and find this method to make gardening manageable.for someone my age and ability.

We call that orange twine universal rope. Use as much as needed to tie anything up. Then just cut it off! We keep ours in a 5 gal bucket w/ lid with a small hole to pull it out.

Fabulous video! I was gonna ask why you chose 28.5 inches but then I realized that with your offset (spiral?) pattern you get a 30" square bed. I use something similar over here in France. Every spring the local Brico Marche and sometimes supermarkets have small raised beds for about 12-13 euros. I have almost 30 of them now since I started buying them 5 years ago when we moved to France. They are 1 meter square with half-lapped joints and modular so you put together 10 pieces and they are about 8 inches high and 36 inches square of usable space. I just lay them out in a row and fill with dirt. The next year I pull them up and I have a raised bed. So now I have raised beds all over my half-acre garden. I am retired now but I used to be a market gardener so I grow a lot of food because I just can't help myself. This year I am going big-time on the Ruth Stout method. I got over a hundred nice straw bales for 3 euros apiece (cheap, cheap, cheap) last year and covered a lot of my garden over winter using about 50 of them. I then laid my potatoes on top of the old, rotted straw and covered with another layer of straw. I experimented with the Ruth Stout method when I was in NW Washington state but I had such a slug problem, I had to drop it. I have some slugs here in southern France, but nothing like the slugs in Washington. I grow rye and wheat every year for the biomass. Sometimes I harvest it, sometimes I don't. The rye gets over 6 feet tall. Both rye and buckwheat (another crop I grow) are reputed to change insoluble phosphorous to soluble phosphorous so I rotate them all over the garden. As for the SPF, I am not surprised you are getting extra years of use. I built a cabin in northern Minnesota in 1976 out of balsam fir because it twists instead of warps as it dries. I put up green logs I dropped on site and set them in the ground palisade style without any preservative. I expected the cabin to last only 10 years because of the ends in the ground rotting, but it is still standing, almost 50 years later. I bought a Planet Whizbang wheel hoe kit from you about 10-12 years ago. I wish I still had it but I couldn't ship all my tools to France. It worked great. It was expensive just for my reference books.

I assembled my frames and got my bunker cover staked down last night.

Very interesting, never seen this style before. Beautiful soil.

Many many years ago, I read your blog the christian agrarian. I enjoyed seeing all your gadgets and ideas and am still telling all my chicken keeping friends about the plucker. How fun to accidentally find you on YT! :) This low mini bed idea sounds great for me as I age. Even though it is low to the ground, it is easy to make by myself. Interesting that they held together so well without a corner piece on the inside! What are the metal stakes for? What do you do to kill off your rye or wheat that you plant in the beds?

Enjoyed the video. Nice garden area

Liked this. I save the screws when i remove them. The long #10s around here are $6 + per pound

Nice video. I have to get my wife to watch this video.

Terrific!👍🙏✌️🇬🇧

I miss the minibed garden.

cool that the plastic lasted that long, here in Colorado it probably wouldn't. I may cover the plastic with mulch to shield from UV.. I dislike plastic so I'll probably choose thick mulch and some weeding and go with 4'x4' beds or 4x8 .... I have to raise or fence because of rabbits wabbitz wabbitz

Cool garden set up. Hard to decide if you are better at carpentry or gardening. Wondering throughout the video how you keep the moles out

Looking forward to many Minibed plantings this summer. I wonder how you are able to keep all those leaf mulches in place especially during the windy fall season.

Herrick, lovely inspiration. I started setting up my minibeds on billboard tarps last year. I have room for 88 minibeds but only got 11 installed last year. Do you use Phillips or star drive deck screws?

8ft 2x4 into 28.5 lengths means 10.5 scrap. I'd probably make the sides a bit longer... or maybe cut the 10.5 into 2 or 3 stakes.

Why 28.5 square and not longer rectangular? Thanks for such a clear concise presentation.

Have you tried charring the wood with a torch to make the lumber last longer? I've also seen some people that then using linseed oil to treat the lumber?

What mil did you use for the bunker cover ? I used the billboard plastic in my mini bed garden and it is starting to get brittle (5 yrs)

Greetings, Where are you located? I am located in the Capital District. What are you planning to grow 2024 season? Cheers, Upstate NY

What are the frames for if the bed is notraised ? Mulch retention ?

Where does the rain water go?

Would it be economical to replace your wood with cinder blocks as the beds deteriorate? It might cost more than wood overall, but one or two at a time should be manageable and cost effective, and you won't have to replace them again! Just a thought!😊❤

That plastic will eventually break down into the soil and can't be a good system on a large scale environmentally.