New to Raised Bed Gardening

[TnAndy]

Looks like some expensive veggies, but hobbies are hobbies!

Our "hobby" provides us with most of what we eat (we also raise and home process our beef, pork, chicken and catfish + eggs).

I suppose providing yourself with what it takes to live instead of working for someone else to earn money, supporting a host of govt weenies with taxes taken from it, then buying inferior food trucked thousands of miles is considered 'odd', but to each their own I guess.

Some of our other hobbies include cutting all the firewood off our place needed to heat our home, putting up an 11kw solar power system that supplies all our electrical power needs instead of buying a bass boat and drowning worms is also odd, but what the heck, huh ?

 

[mark02tj]

TnAndy - you are my new idol!! :thumbsup: I love seeing the pictures of your place and I'm in awe of all that you do down there. Your level of self-sufficiency is amazing!!

 

[justinramani]

Our "hobby" provides us with most of what we eat (we also raise and home process our beef, pork, chicken and catfish + eggs).

I suppose providing yourself with what it takes to live instead of working for someone else to earn money, supporting a host of govt weenies with taxes taken from it, then buying inferior food trucked thousands of miles is considered 'odd', but to each their own I guess.

Some of our other hobbies include cutting all the firewood off our place needed to heat our home, putting up an 11kw solar power system that supplies all our electrical power needs instead of buying a bass boat and drowning worms is also odd, but what the heck, huh ?

I definately don't think he was trying to he rude. I'm definitely envious of your set-up. Very nice!

 

[ch1ch2]

Intersting your using block.. how are you keeping those in place.. I have access to some cheap 16" block and thought about using them and using landscape adhesive to keep them together. I also want to leave the ends of my raised bed gardens open so I can drive my tractor through it to prep them.. or is that crazy? I hear they are a lot less prep work so maybe not necessary.

I'll have to check out that book. I have been gardening for years with some success, the last 15 years, my soil quality was pretty poor but now I moved and have outstanding soil so I'm pretty excited to get things in the ground here. I am tall and HATE bending over so I think I'm going at least 18" to 24" deep since it doesn't seem to be a negative to go taller.

I fill the holes with dirt.
I have planted several things in the holes. I like strawberries best.

 

[EddieWalker]

If you use pressure treated wood for the raised bed, wrap black plastic weed block around the inside before you fill with dirt. You don't need the pressure treating chemicals leaching into the soil and going into the plants / vegetables. Defeats the purpose of growing your own food - may as well eat grocery store food with all the chemicals they come with!

Quite a few years ago the chemicals used to create pressure treated wood where changed. The arsenic was removed and now they use zinc.

 

[TnAndy]

I definately don't think he was trying to he rude. I'm definitely envious of your set-up. Very nice!

Dunno....but it's not the first time I've heard it. It merely shows short sighted thinking to me.

Lot of folks think the store sticker price of a tomato, for example, is the TRUE price of a tomato without consideration of the amount of their time it took to actually get that tomato...which is the true price.

When you factor in having to drive to a job (figure 50c/mile at least), earn money that has income/SS/etc taken out of it, then drive to a store, purchase your tomato, with sales tax, what really is the cost of that tomato ? Dang sure isn't the sticker price the store put on it, in real terms.

Then there is the "what if you can't buy a tomato" factor. While I hope the world continues to rock and roll right along as it has for my 65 years, I'm not stupid enough to think it can't change for the worse, having seen it do so many places before and having read a little history. Turns out the lack of change is actually more odd than change over the course of human history. Yeah....laugh at my tinfoil hat if you want....but remember when Noah started the Ark, it wasn't raining.

IF it comes to the day the whole host of people behind that store tomato can't do their jobs (the seed company, the farmer, the fertilizer company, the trucking company, the store itself, and probably a dozen others) FOR WHATEVER REASON (and there is wide choice of them), then the folks out there with these hobbies that have the experience, tools, and infrastructure set up to grow, and preserve food are gonna be dang near priceless.

And it doesn't have to be a Mad Max kind of world. Take Social "Security" for example, or nearly any pension plan (we depend on both for our retirement income). The govt and pension plans have made financial promises that are nearly impossible to keep. You're seeing private pension plans crack now....public ones will join them at some point because they simply can't keep printing money AND having it retain value over the long haul to fulfill those promises they never should have made.

I have no idea when that pile of poop is gonna hit the fan, but assuming it does so in the next 20-30 years, wife and I will be affected by it. THAT is another reason for our hobbies....hopefully to mitigate the effect of the fact our incomes will get cut.....probably quite drastically. The better prepared for it one can be, the less it will hurt.

 

[TnAndy]

Quite a few years ago the chemicals used to create pressure treated wood where changed. The arsenic was removed and now they use zinc.

Yeah, and unfortunately that change about made treated wood the same as untreated wood in terms of rotting. Boring bees, for example, would never bother the old CCA stuff....this new stuff they drill out with no apparent effect.

 

[EddieWalker]

Andy,

True about the wood. Also the wood seems to warp and shrink a lot more then ever before. It will cost me more in the long term doing it this way, but my thinking is that it's more important to get the gardens going, then to build the best possible beds that I can first. I would love to do what you did, and when my boards rot out, I just might. It will all depend on how long the treated wood lasts, and what my priorities are at the time I have to replace them. Ten minutes labor and $20 in materials compared to the time to build a foundation, lay block and pay for it all.

You have set the standard, my goal is to follow in your footsteps and try to accomplish something similar.

I also agree with your view that there will be a time when we can no longer rely or afford to buy what we have become used to getting from the store. Everything is based on a very massive supply line that wouldn't take much to disrupt. A big storm can stop the supply chain for a month. Then what?

 

[mark02tj]

I have four 4x8 raised beds and two 4x12 beds. I over-researched the materials and also read that "modern" pressure treated wood was safe, but I still didn't want to do it. My first three 4x8's were made out of standard 2x10's, mainly because I didn't have enough in my budget for cedar. I put a couple of coats of linseed oil on the boards prior to assembly. This is my fourth or fifth growing season with them and they're holding up well. I did the fourth 4x8 and the two 4x12's out of 2x8 cedar (wanted 2x10, but Menards was out of stock on it the weekend that I wanted to build them). I left the insides bare, but put a stain on the outside just to keep the cedar from graying.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with using the PT lumber, Eddie, but like I said, I'm funny about stuff like that.

I've had the materials to do drip irrigation for a couple of years, but haven't gotten around to installing it yet. I'm determined to install it this year as I hate dragging hose out to the garden to water. Actually, I just hate rewinding the hose!! LOL!

I also built a strawberry planter on casters late last summer and transplanted a lot of my strawberry plants into it. I'll be curious as to how it does this spring.

 

[JRobyn]

I just studied up on pressure treated wood chemical hazards. I am in the process of FINALLY building the wife a couple of long-promised raised beds. I have a bunch of leftover scraps of PT lumber from our house build, so I cut them in 18" pieces to form the sides, with an upper and lower 4x4 "belt" on the outside with lap joints fastened with a lag screw pin.

Since I inhaled a bunch of sawdust while cutting the sides, I was concerned about poisoning myself. My research shows that the EPA halted production of the old CCA (Copper-Chromate-Arsenic) in 2003. Existing stock could still be sold, but I'm sure it was all long gone by the time of our build in 2009-10. CCA was replaced by ACQ (Amine-Copper-Quat), which eliminates the arsenic, but still has all the copper. I'm coating the cut ends and all of the non-treated 4x4 belts with this
and will wrap the inside with some old vinyl sheeting just to be sure.