Building Raised Garden Beds

by Doug
(in his garden somewhere)

I want to show you how to build raised garden beds with a minimum of fuss and muss.

Carpentry comes first - The first step after nailing together the boards (they’re 2x8’s - 8 feet long) and it took three of them to make this rectangle. They’re common spruce and not pressure treated or cedar as i wanted to make some inexpensive beds - we tend to move things around at this stage of our garden building so if they rot out in a few years, I’ll simply build good ones where I know I want them to stay.

I had applied compost the previous fall and never got around to doing the digging so the weeds appeared this spring. In a perfect world, the weeds would be dug first, then the compost applied. But get rid of those weeds. You’ll notice how careful I am with them.

Next add a 3.8 cubic foot bale of peat moss to the bed and spread it out evenly.

After this add enough garden soil - to top up the bed.

Once this is done, mix the underlying soil, the compost, the peat and the top soil into one big mixed up rich soil.

The last step is to rake it all level. The next person to walk on this bed gets yelled at big time.

This bed will now grow anything

Finished! Energy consumed - about one half pound of gardener’s winter-stored fat.