Posted on July 23, 2020 by The Herb Farmer
This DIY Raised Garden Bed Project was pretty budget friendly as we made most of it from recycled materials.
Due to my dietary needs and the need for self isolation due to a weakened immune system, we had been wracking our brains on how to make use of our small urban yard. Here is a step by step process on how we started our urban garden.
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Once we had an idea of what we wanted to build , the first step was sourcing wood. We did not want to invest a ton of money and we are big on recycling/upcycling where we can , so we decided to repurpose wood pallets. It took us about 2 weeks to collect enough pallets by visiting local retail stores & other local business’s that just put them at the side of the road for people to take. We wound up using approx 15 skids. (Some were not entirely usable)
Stripping the pallets takes a bit of time and a little muscle but ultimately is a pretty easy task.
Now that your raised bed is in place it is time to add the door.
This bed once built will take 4 yards of soil to fill it.
We got 4 yards of triple blend soil from a local garden Center. *** We also had some other uses for the soil, like filling all of our containers and adding some top dress to other areas, and for this reason, we used the following method:
Hugelkultur
Which in short is a form of gardening where your base layer is comprised of logs & branches.This is where the pruning of the trees on our property came in handy!
We trimmed our trees leaving anything one inch or less in diameter for our new wood chipper.
Any branches 1 inch and over were for the raised beds and placed on top of cardboard.
We also wanted to add another component of gardening called living soil. Over the last few years we have been composting our scraps. We were given a bail of straw from a family member to use as mulch.
Layer The Soil :
Cardboard helps suppress weeds, logs and branches, a layer of straw, home made compost, then about 6 to 8 inches of triple mix soil. Being mindful that we will be adding a layer of straw mulch once planted.
This isn’t a perfect living soil method but it is what we had on hand and any other soil building can be done in the future years with mulching and top dressing amendments.
Mulching The Outside
We had purchased a wood chipper from Amazon in hopes to eliminate our continued fallen branch problem every year. Also will save us money on buying mulch.
Take the grass sod off the surface and flip it upside down,continuing around the outer edges. On either side of the entrance we mounded a bit of triple mix soil, levelled it, then added our fresh mulch.
Adding The Enclosure
Using the farmer’s almanac website we were able to plan out how we wanted our vegetable and fruits bushes placed on our property. It also gave a printout of for what time of year to plant each type we were planting. Great website for you to check out. They have a free trial for a week I believe.
We hope you found these instructions of value and cannot wait to hear about your gardens! Leave a comment below letting us know what you are growing this year!
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