A Raised Garden Bed, A Hot House, plus More…

What do you do when you love gardening but you just had a hip replacement  and you will never again be able to get down to soil level to get the work done?

Well you may want to do what my sister in New Brunswick did:  have someone build you a raised  garden bed ( “a garden in a wooden box” built at the perfect height so that she can continue gardening without having to bend much). If you are as lucky as she is, perhaps that person can put in place not only an automatic watering system but also a hot house.

Click on the picture for a better side view of her hot house and raised garden

This garden bed is 51 inches wide, 149 inches long, and approximately 12 inches deep.

When building a raised garden bed,  one should buy  red pine  or red cedar. ( Normal cedar can be used, but it will rot faster than the other two.)  Of the three, red pine is the strongest and will last the longest i.e. will not rot as fast as the other two.

In this case, Jacques (her son) chose to make this raised garden bed with “rough” red pine.  He needed some 4×4 for the pillars (legs), and some 2×6  boards.  (Again they don’t have to be fancy.  The “rough” red pine boards work well)

First, he made the frame of the box by nailing together 2×6 red pine boards standing on edge.  Then he cut long 4 x 4 beams into six  4×4  beams/posts/legs  –  each 22 inches long,  and nailed one of these inside each corner of the box and one at the middle of each side.

Once he had uprighted this structure so that the box was held up by the posts (legs), he made sure strengthening cross boards were nailed in place from side to side (minimum 3 cross boards)

Jacques did not realize that he would need  to put blocks of cement 12 inches square and minimum 2 inches thick under each of the six 4 x 4 beams/posts/legs (whatever you want to call these)  because the weight of the raised garden was slowly causing the legs to sink into the ground.  For the moment reinforcement blocks had to be set under the garden bed to stop the supporting posts from sinking into the ground.  (You may want to remember to do this especially if you have heavy clay soil under the “legs” of the raised garden bed)

The fourth step is to build the bottom of the box with a bunch of 2 x 6 red pine boards set side by side from front to back   (you can put these from side to side if you wish).  Putting these boards tightly side by side allows excess water to simply seep through the tiny gaps between the 2 x 6 boards and fall to the ground thus avoiding  overwatering  the plants. On the other hand, the boards tightly laid side by side keeps the soil in place.

If you look carefully at the next picture, you will notice this layer of boards on top of the frame.  It looks like it is meant to  separate the frame from the above  layer of  boards.

The fifth step is to nail pieces of  2 x 6 red pine boards upright extending from the side of the box frame upwards.  The side boards of the box will be set up inside these and nailed.

In the above picture, you can see four of these  2 x 6 boards extending upright on the side of the raised garden bed.  If you want a box 12 inches deep, you will have to add a few inches to the length of these so that they can be nailed securely to the frame.

The sixth step  to building a raised bed is to add the sides of the box itself and secure the boards in place.  In this case the box itself is 12 or so inches deep, plenty of space for homemade compost,  soil, or whatever else you wish to add.

As a last step, you could add a flat layer of 2 x 4  red pine ( or other type wood)  around  the very top of the box to provide a resting area and to lock together the side boards even more securely.

When all was done, my sister’s raised garden bed stood approximately 34 inches high, just the right height for her.  Click on the picture to have a better view of what the end of the raised garden looks like.

Here are my sister’s comments:

“It makes it easy to weed and I really like it.”

“My hot house is made out of glass on both sides, plastic in front and back with a window in back and the top is plastiglass. I have a rain barrel with a pump that has a timer to water the garden twice a day or however often I want. Jacques (my son) bought the timer because he forgets and/or does not have time to water the garden. So if there is no one home the garden gets watered anyway.”

In this last picture you will have a better view of her rain barrels and her compost bin.  Notice beside her wheel barrow the aerating tool which can be used to add air to her compost every so often.  You can read more about this tool at
http://supercompostingtips.com/adding-air-to-composting-pile/

Although her back yard is very small (as most backyards are), she can still make her own compost to feed her vegetables, use rainwater to water them, grow her own seedlings in her hot house, and enjoy the best vegetables in the world: organically grown lush, healthy, nutritious Vegetables!

Now don’t you think this little raised garden bed with the automatic watering system is the best setup in the world?

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Tags:building a raised bed,building a raised garden,raised bed,raised garden,raised garden bed

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