I've made 14 raised beds, always in the late summer and fall. I'd pitch grass clippings, garden rejects, wet and moldy straw or hay, leaves, bulk compost and or soil and deep bedding from the chicken coop. Layered and mixed all together with some minerals like azomite and let it percolate over winter with a leaf layer to protect it.
The only other thing I would add is some cut up bananas to tease the worms to come up and start eating. Once they're done with the bananas they'll get to work on everything else, now you have worm castings and everything churned up to help your plants. Don't forget to waterdown everything because it needs moisture to start decomposing.
don't mix-in the worm foods that will decompose too "hot" - the worms like retreat to an area with less rotting and also from too much water/rain! put the kitchen scraps on top with minimal soils overtop to keep the smells and rodents away. Otherwise the worms will crawl out
Nice raised garden bed. I’ve always wanted a raised garden bed. I’m gonna build a raised garden bed just like your raised garden bed using your video on raised garden beds..
Should be a nice raised garden bed I would like to see your raised garden bed Hope you have a wonderful time planting your raised garden bed Happy Sunday and Good luck 🤞🏾 with your raised garden bed 😂
@fackeyutub-emael6545 that's to bad...I have had a worm farm for the past Years and friends drop by organic peelings and coffee grounds...in spring they get a bag of worm castings...been a good trade.
@@bryancromwell9625and Monsanto claimed Roundup was nontoxic for the last 25 years but now we know that was a lie! "Safer" and safe are completely different ideas!
I tell every single person I know who is even considering micro homesteading or just intro gardening, which makes me just joyful in my heart that a true gardener has their own mixed combination that they swear by for soil, and I love it, they have their own compost, formulation, sub, or how they do it
I have a patch of clay on the side of my house. Decades ago it was dirt and moss. I'm not sure what happened. This fall I used the leaf blower to cover the area with a thick layer of leaves and I staked down some landscaping cloth ON TOP so the leaves don't blow away. I'm leaving it that way for a year or two before I try to plant grass. Maybe I'll plant moss again.
I use to put pine chips in my chicken house and cleaned them once a month man your right about using all the stuff. Also called our local city and they actually brought out loads of wood chips in a dump truck and dump them and we composted them made great amended soil.
Thank you. My elderly parents were talking about making a larger garden with some raised garden beds because bending over is hard on their backs. This is great!
Do it, my brother and I made one for my mom a couple years ago. Keeps her moving, and more importantly, keeps her brain engaged and a responsibility that's manageable for her, so she actually enjoys it and finally most importantly, because it's enjoyable, its sustainable
I use bulk mushroom compost from the nursery. Its a lot cheaper than bags and it has much more organic content. Im in Tn. and this is my first time trying year round gardening.
Im just impressed that the white jacket didnt get one dirt stain on it 👍 but seriously tho that is really good advice im going to ve doing this from now on
I have an allotment and today I built another raised bed. Can't wait to use it. I have pet hens so I also make my own compost and liquid feed. Nothing better than getting your hands in soil and then picking your veg.
Some things are just worth the effort, this is one of them. It has to be done either way, and doing it now rather than later has a bigger payoff. Work smarter, not harder 😉
Wood isnt treated with aresenic anymore and it has already been proven that any (copper) leeching from modern pressure treated lumber incredibly small, and the risk to humans even smaller. If you want to go off of what you "feel" like, that's fine for your own garden. But dont go around spreading misinformation that has been disproven.
I've done something similar multiple times! I'm a huge fan of bottom loading with organic matter. Cardboard, leaves, hay, rough compost, logs, branches, kitchen scraps, you name it! Been growing in these beds for years now with epic results!
The best performing garden we ever grew was In around 1958. That past winter, we had moved to a 40 acer older farm. Mom decided to raise chickens. I had chosen to be the outdoor chore kid and was responsible for the evening care and feeding of all our animals. 2 horses, 1 huge pig, 2 steers, 4 dairy goats & 1 Billy,8 numerous ducks, and 300 chicks, I was maybe 7 years old and was tasked with cleaning out the ~16 x 16 ft coop and spreading it on the 1/4 acre spot she had decided to have our garden. The powder dry manure was between 1 -> 2 ft deep. The harvest from all those plants was out of this world. The Bonnie Best tomatoes were the usual size of Beef Steaks, and the Beef Steaks were larger than her 8 inch plates. We also spread ashes from the wood and coal fired furnace, finely crushed eggshell, and the waste vegetable bits from meal preparation. The Indian Corn and Pop Corn plants all had 2- 3 large ears per stalk. The sweet corn ears were a wonder. The potatoes were huge. We canned as much as we had jars for. The root cellar was actually full. It was one of my favorite places to read. The place smelled wonderful, all earthy. It smelled especially good after we had stored the apples and carrots. The root cellar was cool in the summer. Important because we didn't have no air conditioning. My parents took bushels of tomatoes and canning pickles to co-workers.
you can sign up for chip drop.. it's where tree trimming services will bring you free loads of wood chips. that being said you WON'T know if any of them had been treated with chemicals in the past or if any poison ivy was on the trees before being chipped. we were going to do this but decided not to due to those 2 reasons.
They have to pay to dump woodchips, so if you just call and ask they’re extremely happy to get rid of them and they drop them anywhere you need. No bribe necessary you’re doing them a favor by taking them.
No matter what any RU-vid connoisseur /comment artist tells you. That’s a hard no on pressure treated lumber. Period. You’re welcome to use it in your garden if you’d like 😉
@@tattoosteveneo no I’m just some idiot on RU-vid. No idea what I’m talking about. You’re right go ahead and use pressure treated lumber for your garden beds.
Well, to be real, you're making natural soil. And you're using natural fertilizer in your garden beds. That's a great idea and a great way to produce point
great raised garden bed video about a raised garden bed, you my momma used to have a raised garden bed and she used just used whatever she had lying around to fill up her raised garden bed, man i miss my momma's raised garden bed.
When i fill my beds, i just head out ot the bog on the bag 40. fill up a couple old feed bags with the muck, let it dry in the sun for a few weeks, ands then mix it with the soil from my old pig pen. Last year i had beefsteak tomatoes the size of small pumpkins.
I wouldn’t lay it on the ground though. The worms need to be able to come up. Just line the insides of the wood. Also to stop the wood rotting away and to last a lot longer. 😊
It's not just about soil cost, it's also the savings on fertilizer because most of the stuff thrown in that raised bed is natural fertilizer that will break down over time, is healthier for the plants, and does not contain pesticides. Although wood ash is better than charcoal ash, they both are better than miracle grow...
Theres not much nutrition in the stuff he threw under, even when it breaks down, its mostly for volume. Depending on what he's growing, roots might not even reach the bottom. If you want to enrich soil you need to use wood chips and let them break down.
@@AlenAbdula you are incorrect. Wood is mostly cellulose fibers. The dried wood has very little nutrients compared to the leaves and it takes much longer for wood to break down to make whatever nutrients bioavailable to the garden plants. Leaves contain much higher amounts of nutrients. Do you make a salad with wood chips? The charcoal and ash are good sources of nitrogen and will help keep the soil clean of parasitic pests. Wood chips are good in compost, but compost is not just wood chips. What's that saying, "common sense isn't common anymore"...
I only use steel for raised beds but I understand that the chemicals used to treat wood nowadays is not toxic. That’s what I’ve heard, but I still do not use it.
Next time go out to the forest, find a fallen tree that’s started rotting and bring back a trailer full to put at the bottom of your raised bed. Then leaves etc and then compost mixed with dirt.
hugelkultur! Make sure to find one really rotted though, half the time in my experience the wood bed sides rot before the wood in the bottom starts decomposing! Either way tho saving money on soil
Wood will never last very long when it’s touching wet soil, pressure treated or not. But pressure treated lumber is full of chemicals like copper and oil that are certainly not great to have leaching into your soil, lawn, and food.
@@ImranZakhaev9the problem wasn’t the copper itself it was the chromated copper arsenate leaching arsenic into soils. CCA has been banned in pressure treatments. Copper quat is used now to prevent rot and fungus, same chemical that’s used as a fungicide in pools. Perfectly fine for retaining soil.
People really don't know what they're talking about with pressure treated wood. For over 20 years, pressure treated wood has been doped with a copper compound to do the job. Unless you have ancient pressure treated wood laying around or build a bed out of railroad sleepers, it's safe to use pressure treated wood.
First of all I'm going to save you some money. Take all those leaves lay them out in the shape of the bed cover it with black plastic leave it till April 1st. The worms will move in because no cardboard and they will eat the leaves and anything else that is there. Come spring add 2 inches of topsoil, plant your seed or plants.
@TheWhale45 people use it for different reasons. As a filler material, carbon source to balance out nitrogen additions, weed suppression. I dont use cardboard in the bottoms of my bed personally. I use shredded cardboard as mulch and in making compost. I will also use flattened cardboard on top of the soil for moisture retention for certain crops like carrots. Cardboard is just a great addition in the garden and most people generally have tons of it from packages and such, so it's cheap and easy
@TheWhale45 also there is certain cardboard that is plastic coated so that shouldn't be used. Think like shiny smooth boxes that are covered in print/product pictures
Best to use corrugated sheet metal like zinc fence instead of wood. It will last the years and no danger of rotting out. I’d paint the zinc with a weather coat on the outside and use galvanized screws if I was making it. Fill the whole thing with horse manure and a drop of mamothP
yikes add some logs at the bottom man. up to the high ankles. Then the chicken coop stuff then leaves, then more chicken coop. it's cheaper and the log layer breaks down over 10 years. you can use woodchips and chicken coup stuff as a layer as well that breaks down faser than straight logs your looking at like 3ish years.
@@Hobbsthetiger You can also fill it withwoodchips but the point ins't for the bottom to rott out quickly. In a sense it's just filler. Roots move right past that zone without too many issues if they need root that far down and most don't except carrots and d radish. chicken poop/manure will rot out for those weird spots. Rabbit manure is better, cuy, or llama.
Hey Einstein, you’re using pressure treated wood. Pressure treated wood leeches all of its chemicals into the surrounding ground i.e. your garden. I hope you don’t mind ingesting chemicals with your vegetables. Best of luck
i buy 2 new beds every year they go on sale. i like the waist high beds . and build them when i get them. usually in the spring or summer. but i don't plant them out. i fill those suckers up all season and all winter with compostables. we keep topping it off as it sinks all year. so when the next planting season starts i just need to top it off with dirt. it really helps with drastic settingling.
@@bbbean Studies showed for years that eggs were bad for you. Then they were good. Then they were bad. Now they're good. Point is, why bother risking arsenic and god knows what else in your vegetables? Natural is always better.
Another good reason to build raised beds at the end of the growing season and fill up is that everything (except the logs if any) is usually decomposed enough to start planting into by late spring. But I no longer build tall beds like yours though. They dry out too quickly without an irrigation system and I have found that my plants do much better when they can grow into native soil.
There is nothing in this video to suggest that any of this is treated wood. Now, the treated wood does release toxins into the soil. Probably varies due to both soil makeup, it's PH, and amount of watering/rain you have. Whether those toxins are then taken up into your plants and in what quantity I have no clue. I just avoid using treated wood if possible and the few places there is some I don't plant veggies nearby. Example, one neighbor replaced part of the fence between us. Treated posts. I'm using containers in that area. Other neighbor replaced entire fence between us. They sprang big $$$ on redwood posts. Not treated, last the rest of my lifetime and not an issue.
I throw the ashes from my smoker into my garden every spring. I save all the ashes all summer and in the spring when I am tilling up the ground I usually put a 5 gallon buckets worth of ashes in the ground also.
If you have some way of letting ashes age for a few years; they’re astounding. Decomposed ash will deepen the green in all stems and leaves. You will see a growth size increase of 15-25% right off the bat.
I suggest getting yourself a composter, I have an electric one called geme, sits right next to my recycling bin in my kitchen.... always have a fresh supply of the best fertilized soil
you can also get free composted manure at the local recycling centre. Atleast you can in Denmark. There are so much energy in that so it has to be mixed with some less energy content spagnum or similar.
have u tried old broken branches? It's called Hugelkulture and they take several years to decay all the while elevating the amount of moisture in your box.
- Cardboard with ink will leech it into the soil; - I find uniformly layering dry leaves towards the bottom creates a compaction layer which retains too much water and promotoes rot instead of decomposition; - the heat from microbian activity when you start a bed will promote root and plant growth when plants aren't dorment. I've always made new beds in early spring/ spring sowing season
Only suggestion is stay away from pt lumber when makeing the bed. If you do decide to use the pt to save on cedar prices make sure to use a liner if using it for growing veggies. That prevents the leeching of the chemicals off the wood.
Love to see your process thank you for sharing but I do recommend not using peat moss as most peat moss is not ethically or sustainably sourced and it can take thousands of years to replenish and re-establish. Peat bogs are an important ecosystem that is rapidly disappearing. I highly recommend using mushroom compost instead in your mix.❤
That works in the 1/2 of the country that has good weather in winter. I'm forced to make beds (raised or otherwise) in Spring, conflicting with planting.
I’m an apartment dweller who once let her balcony get a little too messy with leaves. I’d run out of trash bags the day decided to start cleaning up the leaves that had fallen off my other plants. I did just as he gathered them and chunk them into my City Picker. Then I covered the whole thing with a soil. Best tomatoes I ever ate. Even the rats enjoyed eating the whole plant.
We aware that 'organic' miracle grow is not organic; and organic soil I have found is nothing more than tree bark and mulch. It hasn't brokendown at all and that is what it needs to do to be of any value to your garden. Like he said, start in the winter to allow your soil to breakdown into the plants needed nutrients. Kitchen scraps are golden for a rich soil.
