Raised garden beds

[General Lee]

I know most here probably have land that allows large gardens. My land is mostly wooded and my soil is terrible so I am trying a couple of raised beds this year. Has anyone else gone this route for their own veggies? I've been reading a book on "Square Foot Gardening". Seems you can get a lot from little space.

 

[dave1949]

That's a good book. We have two 5x10 raised beds, we don't follow the square foot thing too closely, but the idea is the same. We raise carrots, lettuces, onions, staked tomatoes, red beets, radishes, and a few annual flowers in ours. Sweet corn, beans cukes and other stuff that takes room goes in the regular garden.

The beds are very productive with less labor involved. Easy to water also. Since the soil bed is small, you can afford to fill them with really great top soils and compost. Our beds are three 2x8's tall but the soil is not to the top, usually somewhere just above the second 2x8.

 

[Looking4new]

That is all we do here is raised beds. we make ours 4' square and place them 3' apart. They are about 12" deep. We make up our own triple mix to fill them.

 

[robstaples]

We highly recommend using the square foot method that we have been using for years and hás been successful . We use electric fence to keep the deer out as well. Attractive, productive, and easy to maintain. Some years it's not necessary to rototil because the soil doesn't get compacted. We have a tall pole fense on the back side (north) to grown pole beans and cukes.
Started with wood raised sides and walk ways. Now have steel... Salvaged guard rail sides and c channel for walkways

 

[General Lee]

I am planning on 2 beds......4x10 each to start. I'd like to have tomatoes, squash, cukes, cantaloupe. Problem is the 3 of those are crawling plants and I'd need to have a trellis of some sort.

Did you guys use treated wood for the boxes? I don't have access to cedar boards.

 

[grsthegreat]

my wife is a square foot gardening fanatic. shes even adapted it to her greenhouse. it does seem to work great. I built her the 1' x 1' grids with 1/2" pvc pipe and fittings.

we have 2 raised beds that she uses, and they also work great. Our native soil isnt very good for gardening, so the raised beds have allowed us to use bag mixes to create a nice bed.

we also have to use removable plastic hoop houses to cover when weather gets too cold.

shes itching at the gate to get out and start the gardens already...heck the snow hardly has left the ground. she was bugging me to help clean the greenhouse today, but i dissuaded her (side tracked) buy inviting several of the neighbors to go target shooting in the back instead. She liked that idea better. The hit of the day was placing large chunks of ice (broken out of ice on ground) on top of the target stand and attacking them with the Saiga 12gauge. Man, that gun evaporated huge chunks of ice...nothing left. It was the hit of the day./.... till we ran out of ice


but i succeeded in letting her forget about cleaning the greenhouse till next weekend.....its too early.

 

[dave1949]

I am planning on 2 beds......4x10 each to start. I'd like to have tomatoes, squash, cukes, cantaloupe. Problem is the 3 of those are crawling plants and I'd need to have a trellis of some sort.

Did you guys use treated wood for the boxes? I don't have access to cedar boards.

I have PT 4x4 outside corner posts but the rest is regular kiln dried spruce (I think) lumber. I wouldn't want the leaching from PT in the veggie soil. Plus, you can replace the kiln dried at least twice for the cost difference between PT or cedar.

 

[mjcountrybumpkin]

I built these 42" high boxes for a gentlemen who loved to garden but had severe back problems and could no longer bend over at all. Built out of pt then lined with heavy plastic to keep from contaminating the soil. Very unconventional but what he required. Luckily he had a free supply of quality soil in the tune of 15 tons to fill them with.

 

[mjcountrybumpkin]

I built these 42" high boxes for a gentlemen who loved to garden but had severe back problems and could no longer bend over at all. Built out of pt then lined with heavy plastic to keep from contaminating the soil. Very unconventional but what he required. Luckily he had a free supply of quality soil in the tune of 15 tons to fill them with.

The boxes measure 6'w-10'l-3.5'h

 

[mark02tj]

I am planning on 2 beds......4x10 each to start. I'd like to have tomatoes, squash, cukes, cantaloupe. Problem is the 3 of those are crawling plants and I'd need to have a trellis of some sort.

Did you guys use treated wood for the boxes? I don't have access to cedar boards.

Like the OP, my land is mostly wooded too so I'm limited to where I can put in a garden. I wanted to plow up the sunny front yard for a garden, but my better half kind of frowned on that idea. So, I went with raised beds in the side yard instead.

I used cedar/fir 4x4s for the corner posts on all of the beds that I built. On my first 3 beds I used untreated pine for the sides and coated it with linseed oil. That was strictly a budgetary decision at the time - I was broke that year! Those beds were 4x8 and 12" tall. I spaced them 4' apart so I could get the mower that I was using at the time between them. Plus the 4' allows a lot of "working space" between the beds. Last year I put in another 4x8 and two 4x12s. I placed the 4x8 in line with the first three that I built and the two 4x12s perpendicular to them keeping the 4' spacing. Last years beds were all cedar.

With regards to using pressure treated - I've read conflicting things on that. Some people say absolutely not and others say that the chances of any harmful chemicals leaching into the beds was pretty slim. I opted to stay away from the pressure treated as I'm trying to be as organic as possible. I was able to find the fir corner posts at Home Depot. I was able to find cedar lumber at a local lumber yard but last year a new Menards opened up by us and they carry a good selection of cedar lumber. It was about 40% less than the local yard so I bought it there. If all you have is Lowes or Home Depot in your area you might have trouble finding cedar there.

I brought in dirt from a local place that does topsoil and mulch. I bought their "Gardener's Special" soil that was a mix of topsoil and mulch. I haven't been able to get much of anything to grow in it! One of my plans this week is to send out some soil samples for testing so I know what I have.

You mentioned the vining plants you're planning on planting. I used tomato cages last year for cucumbers and zucchini. That worked pretty well. Use Youtube and you'll find lots of examples of people doing this.

On last suggestion - I wanted to put in "a real garden", but as mentioned, I didn't have the space for it. I put an ad on Craigslist looking for garden space and got a reply from a guy that's about 1.5 miles from me. We're still waiting for the weather to break in order to get together, but I'm hopeful we can work something out. His 13 acre property is more farmland than mine is and he already has a 40'x160' garden plowed there. He's going to give me part of that space and we might also share some of the space to put in stuff like pumpkins, watermelons, etc. You might also want to check with any of the local municipalities around you to see if any of them have "community gardens." The suburb I used to live in have plots for rent (about $30 for the season).

Happy gardening!!