A New, Prototype Raised Bed
Yesterday we finished building a raised bed prototype.
It is our goal to enclose all of our beds at some point, but the cost, to date, has been prohibitive. We threw down more beds this spring than we had planned, because we worried about a food shortage when COVID-19 hit in March. Building eight beds at that point, when combined with some immediate needs around the house, was just not in the budget.
It is not for nothing that we call this garden "Steepmeadow." We want our beds to be level. And so, as you can see above, we need to build them into the hill.
We wanted the corner posts to extend above the bed so that we have options to enclose the bed in bird netting, or cover it against frost, or attach fencing of some kind if that proves necessary down the road.
We want it to look good, so that it doesn't offend suburban sensibilities. We want it to last.
It is possible that the bed we built is a little overkill. We used 4x4x8 posts and 2x6x8 boards for the sides. We also added a 2x2 that we sharpened into a stake and drove into the ground at the 4' mark of the 8' side. We might have anchored it with Quickcrete, but decided against this in order to maintain some degree of flexibility in location.
That said, this had to be built into the hill. In order to do this, we created the first 4x8 box, placed it level at the top of the hill. We then put a level on it, raised it on the post at the bottom , and then screwed it in place. The next step was to fill in the boards beneath by digging slightly into the hillside. The grade turned out to be much steeper than we thought. The initial purchase of five boards to get the job done was insufficient. We had to head back and get six more 2x6x8's. Total cost for lumber & screws, $156.
We used pressure treated ground contact lumber and exterior 3-1/2" screws. The end of each board that did not reach the 2x2 stake at the midpoint, or overlapped it significantly, was attached to a cross-board on the interior that, in turn, attached it to the board above. We may drive some metals posts into the ground to ensure that it doesn't slide down the hill when it gets filled with dirt.
Our next step is to kill all the grass (it is always a joy to kill useless lawn) by putting down corrugated cardboard. In the spring, we'll fill it in with compost (ideally our own), and we should be good to go.
We may have overbuilt this one. I suspect that we could get away with 1x6x8 boards instead of 2x6x8's. We will also want to look at a taller board, maybe a 1x12x8, which would save on screws.
Still - we're pretty happy with it. It was good to get the prototype complete. A few minor lessons learned, and we think it turned out alright.
--Tom
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