How to Go About Building a Raised Garden Bed

Building a raised garden bed is helpful when you have poor soil conditions or you want to have complete control over the soil makeup and texture. There are many advantages to having raised garden beds including: the soil in the box warms up quicker so you can plant earlier in the year, the soil does not get compacted, and they require less maintenance.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Lumber
• Nails or screws
• Hammer
• Measuring rule
• Saw

1. The first step to building a raised garden bed is to visualize the project at hand. You need to decide on where you want your garden beds to be placed and evaluate the amount of space you have available. Choose a location in your garden that has both north/south orientations to allow for maximum direct sunlight on both sides.

2. Measure the area where you plan on putting your raised garden beds. Measure the length, width and height that you want your planter boxes to be and draw out a design. You can build your garden beds however you like, though a rectangular design is the easiest and often the best use of space.

3. Go to the hardware store and purchase the supplies for building a raised garden bed. Redwood is a great material to use for garden boxes but it can be a bit expensive. You’ll need enough lumber for all sides of your box, the base, and posts for each of the corners.

4. Cut the lumber to build the sides of your raised garden bed. You also need to cut corner posts out of 4x4 lumber which will fit inside the corners of your garden box. Cut these posts to the height of your garden boxes.

5. Connect the sides of the garden bed together. Nail or screw the sides into the 4 posts from the previous step. These posts are added to the inside of your garden box to add strength.

6. When building a raised garden bed, be sure to cut a piece of gardening plastic that fits inside of the box and either use a staple gun or nails to attach it. This helps to reduce the chance of weeds from entering your raised garden bed from underneath.

7. Add soil and the plants of your choice. Enjoy!

Resources

• Find all of your organic gardening solutions here, at Arbico-Organics.com
• Go Green with ECO FRIENDLY landscaping tools from GreenGardenTools

[FrazzledNanny]

on 6/9/2009 I've been wanting to build a raised garden bed for a while now. Thanks for the easy to follow steps. 5*