DIY Raised Garden Bed
In this video, you’ll learn how to make a DIY raised garden bed. Plus, Dirt Farmer Jay created a set of raised garden bed plans you can download for free (link below). It’s easy to make your own vinyl raised garden beds and a lot cheaper than buying them. Supplies are readily available and you only need a few tools. So, as Jay always says, why not JUST DO IT YOURSELF?!
#gardenbed #gardeningideas #raisedbedgardening
We prefer to use vinyl fencing that is stocked at most home improvement stores. The color is attractive and plays well with all the colors in the garden, it lasts several years without being expensive, and vinyl can be sawn, drilled, and filed with common tools found in many home shops.
You’ll be using vinyl fence rail and corner post stock, along with the number of post caps you’ll need for your project. We use 5” x 5” (13 cm x 13 cm) post stock. If you can obtain plain stock, without any fence rail socket cut outs, you will have more flexibility on how to use it.
Our garden beds are “double-deckers” - meaning that we use two fence rails stacked on top of each other to form the box sides. That means that the corner posts are cut at 17” (43 cm) tall. You can do singles, but we prefer doubles both to give more depth to the growing medium, more height to the box so we don’t have to bend down as much to tend the gardens, and to provide more height so if we place path materials, there is still enough height to have nice proportions to the boxes.
In the United States, the fence rails are commonly sold in 16’ (about 5 meters) lengths. This works out really well. We make our boxes 4’ (1.22 meters) wide, and then, depending on the setting, look, space available and type of crop, we can make the beds 4’ (1.22 meters), 8’ (2.5 meters) or 12’ (3.6 meters) long. This is a very efficient use of material.
We DON’T make 16’ (5 meters) long garden beds. Why? We know ourselves (and most of the rest of humanity) - we will be tempted to not walk around a garden bed to access the other side without stepping into the garden - which is a real raised bed garden “no-no!” Compaction is a real risk, as well as trampling plants, encouraging weed growth, or breaking some of the restraints installed in the box below soil level.
By the way, one of the ways to economize is to purchase damaged fence rails. If the damage is moderate, it’s easy to orient the pieces in such a way that damage is concealed. We’ve been able to purchase damaged pieces for as much as 70% off the usual price. Not bad!
Check out our simple DIY PVC drip watering system that can easily be set up for these raised garden beds
https://youtu.be/Qp3_2Mfu_bI
To download the raised garden bed plans, visit our website at: https://www.dirtfarmerjay.com/resources/raised-garden-bed-plans
Sure, you can go buy garden box kits, but why? With what you’ve seen demonstrated and the construction sketches we’ve provided, you can JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
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