Raised bed designs

AnneBerry, member

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raised beds 06/03/2011

Anne Berry

raised beds 10/26/2011

Anne Berry

raised beds 06/03/2011

Photo: Anne Berry

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Here are two raised beds that were built for the kitchen garden next to The Dutch House in Old New Castle,  Delaware.  They were constructed of cypress wood which is naturally resistant to outdoor elements so requires no treatment.  It weathers to a lovely silvery grey color.  Hard cut masonry nails were used as fasteners in this context of a seventeenth century home.  Note the visual interest created by the diaganol arrangement of the planted rows.  The beets, carrots onions and turnips especially flourished in the loose soil mix.  Successive sowing througout the season kept the gardens productive until late December in this zone 7 climate.

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Comments (5)

Lavender22 writes: Very cool:) I like
Posted: 5:34 pm on March 6th

JabP writes: Raised beds are nice. We have them on a vacant lot which is filled in with debris from a demolished house. But they are made of 2" stock. These appear to be made of 1" stock. Also, we use strong untreated white pine. But we make a mixture of powdered charcoal and boiled linseed oil. The mixture is the consistency of thick paint. We give the wood two coats. For the last two years we have not seen any rotting. Further, for strength we use Simpson Strong Tie corner brackets at the inside of each corner. Then, from the outside of each corner we use 4' or 6' timber ties (2 / corner). Finally, each corner is overlapped so that we get a very strong box. The minimum size board is a 2 x 12. The actual dimensions of a 3 x 4 bed would be 37 1/2 x 49 1/2.
Posted: 8:08 pm on March 18th

Susieqtwo writes: Thanks for the reply. Sounds like the "lasagna" method of composting. Should provide a lot of nutrients. I may try it this spring with one of my raised beds and see how it works.
Posted: 8:30 am on January 29th

AnneBerry writes: Hi Susieqtwo, I had two yards of topsoil delivered from a local garden center for these two raised beds. But I am excited about what I think is a much better way to fill raised beds - homemade compost. Granted it takes some time and a good bit of kitchen and yard scraps but it's free. I just install the wood sides, place the twiggy yard waste on the bottom and then layer kitchen scraps with all of the other yard waste generated. It doesn't take much time for my family of three to fill up a 4'w x 12'l x 1'h bed because we eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. I also like to mix in dried leaves and pine needles with the fresh kitchen scraps so I always make sure I save some bags of leaves from fall cleanup for this purpose. Happy gardening!
Posted: 12:05 pm on January 23rd

Susieqtwo writes: I like the diagonal design, looks great! I'm curious, what type of soil mix do you use for your raised beds?
Posted: 7:11 am on January 22nd

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