Building Raised Beds! | Part 1

Hi everybody, welcome back to my channel. My name is Christopher, as always. And yeah, it's been a long time since my last video. And the reason for that is that I've been working on the new greenhouse. It's not up yet, but it will be there. I've filmed a ton of footage, so I'm going to edit that one day and put up the next episode of the geothermal greenhouse build. So now I'm just waiting for the huge stones. I'm going to build a wall that the house is going to sit on top of. And I'm just waiting for the stones now. So it's a little bit of a hiatus from that project. And I'm guessing within the next month or something, there should be significant progress on that. So hopefully it will be done. I'm going to have to get it done this summer and I'm going to be able to grow a full season next year. So I'm not going to rush it this year because it's a lot of work and I just had to push and push and push. So it's been, yeah, it's not finished at all. So I've just given up on this year's season and I'm going to focus on this area instead. So well, one bad thing can lead to another good thing. So I'm just, just winging it for now. So I thought I'd just bring you along today because you might remember I did this whole thing. Oh yeah, maybe you can see this. This is the raised bed that I built the hoop house on top of. Well, the hoop house is gone and there's a good reason for it and it's called snow. So I started the snow season shoveling off and dusting off all the snow and it worked until a certain point where I just gave up because we have one and a half meter of snow and it was just a hassle because I wasn't able to go down here and yeah, it came, it came like 10 centimeters of snow every day. So I just didn't bother shoveling it off. So I thought, yeah, it's, it's just going to grow and yeah, I'm just gonna rebuild the whole thing and that's what I'm intending on doing. But it went from one and a half meter of snow to complete summer within 14 days. So it's been crazy. It's been a record spring here in Norway. We've never experienced the weather that we have. So it kind of just took me by surprise and I haven't been able to fully plant my potatoes and my carrots and everything, which I should have done a month ago. But I don't know. I'm going to plant them now and see if they produce something. The carrots I'm not worried about because I like the tender, smaller carrots. So it's not a problem at all. But anyway, today I'm going to build two more raised beds. So the idea here is I have some mulch here and I think it looks really nice and it keeps the place clean and it also prevents a ton of wild grass and everything growing here. So the weeds are not a problem at all. So I'm going to continue the success of this setup all the way over here. And so since the greenhouse is not going to be finished for a full season here now, I have a ton of tomatoes and pepper plants and I thought I could just sprinkle them around. But if the grass comes in and the weeds and everything, it's just not going to work out. So I'll try that and learn the hard way that it's not something that will work out. So I'm going to try to build raised beds here and see if I can grow them outside there and keep it clean of weeds and everything. And maybe hopefully I could get a few tomatoes. But it's long into the season now and since we had the nice weather. So I'm not sure, but at least it's going to look fantastic and it's going to be a clean setup for next year's garden. So that's what we're going to do today. And I just wanted to film the thing built. So I think I'm going to time-lapse most of it because it's so darn hot that I don't want to do the whole camera thing every single step I'm going to do. And it's going to be a really, really simple build. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the same timber as I used for this raised bed, but I'm only going to build it half the size. So it's two by eight and no, actually this is one and a half by eight, but I'm going to build it with two by eight. And it's going to be untreated spruce, I think. I think it's spruce. So I'm not sure how many years it's going to last, but the raised bed that I have over here has been growing, has been working out for a couple of years now and it doesn't seem to be taking effect from that at all. So I don't, I don't really mind. And I'm also, I'm also going to plant, I got two blueberry plants. So I'm going to plant those here. And I also have a grapevine that I'm going to try to grow here. So I'm not sure about the grapevine and the blueberry plants, if they will survive the winter, but I'm going to do my best to see if I can actually make that work because it, it would be awesome to have a couple of bushes sprinkled in between the raised beds. So that's what we're going to do today. And I hope you enjoy and I'll come back to talk to you a little bit after I'm finished building the whole thing. So first of all, I wanted to make it as level as possible. I used the excavator in between the digging for the greenhouse and it wasn't very level when I left, left with the excavator. So I just went over with a shovel to make sure that it was as good as possible. I didn't measure it. So yeah, it's not perfect, but it's good enough for what I intended. And the other beds are also a little bit off center. So yeah, the only thing that I wanted to make sure was that they were all in line with the old grow beds. So that's what I kept my focus on. So I used two by eight material for this, it's spruce and it's untreated. And I didn't want to use treated woods because I just like to keep my growing area as clean as possible from chemicals. I don't think that it's a huge deal with modern day chemical treatments of wood. So it probably would be fine, but I just wanted to keep it clean. And I just liked the way that the untreated wood ages. So yeah. I just use some L brackets in each corner. I've found that using L brackets, there's less chance of the wood bending. And when you're using untreated wood, it's much more of a possibility that the wood will try to bend. So I'm just using L brackets, one on top, as you can see there, and one on the bottom. These are just small L brackets and there's really nothing to it, but it's just one way of doing it. I've been using this fabric lately, and it is so much better than the old one that I used. This one is actually made of glass fiber, and that really improves the way it protects against growing weeds and everything. And in the old part of the garden, I used more of a fabric, I think. It was bought at a garden center, but this is bought at a real building company. So it's much more expensive, but it's way better. So I don't imagine things growing through this in the very beginning. And I got a few bags of mulch. This is just bark from trees, and I just love the smell of it, so that's mainly the reason why I use it. And I also think it looks nice. I could also use gravel, but if I were to change the whole thing later, then having to dig out all the gravel again would be just a hassle. So when you're using mulch like this, it's easy to just blend it into the soil at a later stage if that's something that you want to do. So I got a few bags of soil. This is just regular potting soil, and it's not good quality at all, but it's enough for this project. So I'm just going to supplement with some good compost in the years to come, and hopefully it will be sufficient for the plants to grow in. It's not going to be full beds this year, and that's really not something to worry about because I'm only going to have some tomato plants and some pepper plants that were supposed to go outside in the greenhouse, but they have to stay here in the outside garden this year and I'm not expecting too much from them since we live in a really, really cold climate. So this is mainly for experimental this year, and the next year will be much more focused on that. So I just brought down two blueberry plants as you can see, and I initially wanted to place them right where I'm digging right now, and it would be the best place for them, but the problem was that when I just used a shovel and this other tool there, and when I came a little bit further down there, you can see there's a huge rock, and it was so big that I would have used the excavator to remove it. So I just changed my plans and I just dug the hole in another part of the garden, and I think this is a really, really nice spot for it. The only thing is that I initially wanted to use this spot for growing corn next year, but I think there's plenty of space outside of the blueberry plants also, so I think we will be fine. I used some rhododendron dirt. It's much more acidic than my dirt, I guess my dirt is about pH 7, so I wanted something in the pH 4 range, and I just shoved the bag in each hole, and I did some deep watering, and hopefully that will keep the soil acidic for the blueberry plants, and they are such fantastic looking plants, I really enjoy those. I continued with the mulch, and all of a sudden I just realized that, well, I forgot to put in the grapevine. So I wanted the grapevine to grow where I'm digging right now, and the reason for that is that when I finish the trellis on the raised bed right in front of me there, it would be nice to be able to climb the grapevine up that initial pole, so in the future it will probably be a nice spot for it, and it will be somewhat sheltered from winds and everything, so I think that's going to be perfect. I put out the rest of the bags that I had with mulch, and I'm eventually going to continue the mulch all the way down to the right side that you see there, but that's something that I'm going to need way more mulch for, so that's probably going to be next year. I think it looks nice, and I am really satisfied. Okay, back to you buddy. Thanks Chris, the magic of voiceover. Yes, so this turned out the way I wanted it to be, and I put down some mulch, and it looks really clean and nice, and the fabric underneath and everything. So the thing that remains now, and that's going to be for the next episode, is that I'm going to build some contraptment over here, so I can have wires or some lines going down to tie to the tomatoes, so stick around for that. It's going to be my next video, I think. And I'm going to build that on both sides, and a frame on top, and I'm going to clean up a little bit more, plant some peppers, plant some tomatoes, and yeah, the grapevine is doing fine now, and the blueberries also. They didn't seem to mind the move over to the soil here, so yeah, it's looking really nice, and I also have to do, I'm going to put up a cage on top of my strawberries over there, because we have a fantastic problem with some earth rats, or whatever they're called, I don't really know. But they are the bigger mice that actually just dig tunnels, and they have been eating the strawberries for the past years, and also the carrots, so I'm going to try to do something over there with that. But yeah, that's pretty much it for this one, this is Kristoffer saying may the force be with you, and I hope you stick around for the next video on this raised bed. Bye!