Raised Garden Bed Ideas
Easy to follow instructions, tips, and raised garden bed ideas!
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Raised Garden Bed Ideas
Raised bed gardens are all the gardening rage these days. And they should be. There is so much going for this gardening approach that it has become widely adopted at some level by most hobby gardeners. We’ve been using this gardening approach for many years and have lots of raised garden bed ideas to share. One of the best ways to use a raised garden bed is to grow your own food. You can also save money by building a DIY raised garden bed.
While you can use a wide variety of materials to build a DIY raised garden bed, we prefer to use vinyl fencing. You can easily find the materials you need in your favorite home improvement store or fencing supply store. Plus, the tools you need are commonly found in the average home shop. However, if you need to purchase them, they’re not expensive and you’ll be glad that you’ve got them to use for the next project.
“My personal philosophy is that one of the most entertaining aspects of being a maker is the tools you need to buy along the way. In fact, one friend of mine said to me, ‘never do a project that doesn’t require some new tools to go along with it.’ But, don’t tell Dirt Farmer Maggie our little secret!”
In addition to considering what materials to use, before building a raised garden bed it’s also important to consider how big to build it, what growing medium to use, and how to ensure your new DIY garden box has proper irrigation and drainage. In this article, Dirt Farmer Jay will share his knowledge about all of these things with you. Read on to learn more!
Why Should You Garden Using Raised Beds?
While raised bed gardening, in one form or another, has been around for a long time, it’s really become quite common in the last 30 years or so. There are still plenty of direct-planted, right-in-the-field garden plots around. However, even those with sizable food plots tend to make use of raised beds. Some do what we do - a hybrid approach to the garden, which includes having both a raised bed area plus open areas for more typical “field” crops, such as corn, squashes, and melons.
But, why all the popularity of raised bed gardens? There are SEVERAL good reasons why they are so well-loved, including:
Efficiency: A large amount of food can be grown in boxes, using interplanting. Coupled with a simple irrigation system, crops get regular water without waste. They are easy to keep clean and weeded, and because they are raised, you don’t have to stoop down as far to tend to your garden or to harvest.
Ease of construction: These types of gardens can be built from a variety of materials with a minimum of skill. Many times, box material can be purchased used, and given a new life.
Manageability: Many a gardener has fallen prey to overplanting and having a jumbo garden with too many veggies to use, and too much space to keep cultivated and orderly. Raised boxes scale back the size and effort needed to garden and this can really boost the enjoyment of gardening and teach the little ones in your life there is much more to gardening than weeding!
Cost-effectiveness: Beyond a very reasonable entry cost for the boxes or containers themselves, there are costs associated with what you’ll fill the boxes with as well as fertilizer, irrigation, pest control, and mulch. Smaller is better. This also allows you to build your own soil or growing mix and have it contained instead of having to improve a whole field. Soil can be augmented on an ongoing basis with compost and other soil amendments, and crop rotation is easily tracked and conducted.
Less compaction, faster growth, and better drought resistance: This is because you’ll work BESIDE your “mini-garden”, not IN it. This means very little compaction occurs, resulting in more “open” soil. This encourages oxygen, water, and root penetration. Top all of that with a good layer of mulch under and around your plants, and it’s almost magic.
Better weed control: Since you can control what you fill the boxes with, you can invest in ingredients or mixes that have very little weed seed in them. Getting started without a lot of weeds sure makes it easier to get ahead of them year after year.
Attractiveness and orderliness: Why not make the veggie garden a beautiful and fun place to visit? Garden boxes bring a lot of visual structure and contrast to the garden. What you plant in the boxes can range from ornamental to edible, and annual to perennial. Why not? It’s your garden! Having the foundational elements of the boxes in place allows you to place all sorts of really fun and interesting things like pergolas, vine supports, topiaries, water features, and the like. This is supposed to be fun - so let’s make it fun!
What Materials Can Be Used for Raised Bed Gardens?
Although we’ll show you how to make a “double-decker” vinyl raised garden bed, the types of material that can be used are extensive. We really like the vinyl for its appearance and durability, but that may not be your taste. Boxes or gardening containers can be built using recycled lumber, timbers, railroad ties (you’ll need to determine if the preservative in the ties is of concern to you or not), concrete blocks, composite deck material, new lumber, brick, watering troughs, large tubs, recycled tires, pallets, and other found and new materials.
There’s nothing wrong with mixing and matching different types of gardening boxes throughout your garden plot. Mixing a vinyl garden bed with a pallet raised garden bed or cinder block planter could add a bit of whimsy to the setting. It’s your garden, so build it as you like it!
Whatever material you use, consider how the material will weather over time, as well as resist rot. Also, think about how deep you want the beds to be and how the material you have lends itself to the efficient use of building your dream garden boxes. If the material isn’t strong in and of itself, you’ll need to brace it or have internal restraints in it to stop the boxes from bowing out as they are filled with growing medium.
Another thing to keep in mind is the installation of a supply line for whatever irrigation system you are going to use in the growing box(es). Many a gardener has been filled with regret because they didn’t invest the little bit of extra time to run a water “stub out” to the box for ease of connection. Don’t skip this step. You will thank yourself later.
What Is the Optimum Size for a Raised Bed Garden Box?
While we all have our preferences, there are some “rules of thumb” for garden box-sizing that will serve you well. To start, you should make sure your garden bed isn’t any wider than two times the length you can reach. As far as width is concerned, we recommend using 4’ or multiples of 4’ to make efficient use of your materials and maneuverability. When deciding how deep to build it, you’ll need to consider the dimensions of your building materials, what types of crops you’re growing, how you like to work in your garden, and the depth of materials used on your garden path.
We’ll get to depth in a moment, let’s start by discussing the optimal length and width of your garden box.
First, you should never make a garden bed wider than double your arm’s reach. Said another way, if you can’t reach the middle of the raised bed from the side, then you’ve made the bed too wide. We have found that 4’ (1.22 meters) works well for a bed that has access from both sides. If the bed is put up against something (like the side of your house, a garden shed, a stone wall, or fence), and you can only readily access the garden from the front, 2’ (.61 meter) is the maximum width. Also, this width provides some good growing space. Even so, 3’ (.9 meter) wide boxes sport nice proportions as well.
That brings us to the length of the boxes. There are a couple of things to consider in determining this dimension. How big is the overall space you’ll be putting raised boxes in? What are the width of the paths between boxes and other fixed points in or surrounding the garden? Are there places in the garden that you need bigger turning spaces or an area to process materials such as compost and soil amendments? Take this all into consideration, as well as efficient use of material.
Because we use 16’ (4.9 meters) lengths of vinyl fence rail, making all the length dimensions be 4’ or multiples of 4’ makes for VERY efficient use of material with almost no waste. The beds we make, that have access from all sides, are 4’ x 4’ (1.22 m x 1.22 m), 4’ x 8’ (1.22 m x 2.44 m), or 4’ x 12’ (1.22 m x 3.66 m). We also make all of our paths 4’ (1.22 m) wide, except where there is a major intersection and we want more maneuverability space for carts, wheelbarrows, materials, or just to turn a bucket upside down and sit a spell.
That brings us to how tall the side walls can be. To determine how tall to build your garden boxes, you’ll need to take into account four things:
The dimensions of the materials you are using
What types of crops you intend to grow
How you like to work your garden
Depth of path materials
Let’s look briefly at each of the size factors you need to consider when building a raised garden bed:
Building Material Dimensions
This Dirt Farmer is “ambitiously lazy” meaning I don’t like to work any more than I have to in order to get great results. In this case, you’ll want to use multiples of the material to determine your sidewall height. If you are using cement blocks that are 8” (20 cm) tall, then your beds would be multiples of 8”. The vinyl fence rail we use for sidewall construction is 5-½” (14 cm), so this double-decker version will have 11” (28 cm) sides. So, work in concert with what you have.
Types of Crops
Next, what kinds of crops are you going to grow in the box? If they are deep-rooted or are used for berries or grapes, you’ll need a deeper box. If you are going to grow corn, it needs anchorage to withstand wind pressure (you can help corn as well by planting in blocks to both give it more wind resistance and improve pollination). If you are raising many of the typical veggie crops, even 4 to 5 inches of good growing medium will do the trick, especially if it is mulched. If you think about it, much of the world's soils in the wild are very shallow, even covering rock, with vegetation growing out of it.
Gardening Preferences
How you like to work your garden must be considered as well. Do you like to stand and stoop over? Are you a kneeler or use a kneeling bench or some form of knee padding? Do you like to sit on a small bench, a bucket, or a rolling seat? Whatever your preference, you need to size the side walls of your raised bed gardens to accommodate your work approach. Just keep in mind that the taller you make the garden, the more robust the framework needs to be, and the more fill and growing medium you’ll need to put in the raised bed. It’s all trade-offs!
Path Material Depth
The last thing to consider is the depth of the path materials. A stone chip path will not be nearly as thick as a wood chip surface, but it may not offer the feeling underfoot you want or the aesthetic you want. Nonetheless, the thicker the path material, the taller the sidewalls you’ll need to get the same effect. Don’t let this one sneak up on you, but make it part of the planning process.
What is the Best Growing Medium to Use in Raised Garden Boxes?
There are a variety of materials that can successfully be used to grow some really nice crops. This can range from the native soil from the garden space (along with needed amendments) to pre-made mixes. Because there are so many options, a good approach is to avoid specific blends, “recipes”, or brands and instead focus on desired characteristics of a growing medium.
Good growing mixtures will contain both soil and plenty of organic material. You need both - even if the soil has a high clay content or has other undesirable attributes. You need actual soil to create structure, supply microorganisms, and micro-nutrients. I’ve made the mistake of trying to grow my garden in an almost all compost/aged manure mix. It didn’t turn out as well as I’d like. The veggies were malnourished, and the tomatoes developed blossom end rot (BER) from calcium deficiency. An enhanced soil-based mixture in subsequent years cleared that right up.
As organic material, my target, as a percentage of content is between 5 and 7%. Where I live, we’re fortunate to get a percent or two. So, adding rotted manure (not fresh), completed compost, mulching with grass clipping, aged bedding straw from the chicken coop - all do wonders for soil structure, fertility, and “openness” that encourages strong plant growth.
Oh, a few thoughts on pH. In the United States, the rule of thumb is that the eastern half of the county tends to have acidic soils, and the western half tends to have alkaline soils. This has to do with rain, humidity, soil cover and so forth. While you can work to change to pH of your soil, remember that your irrigation water will be the heaviest influence on the ongoing pH of your soil. My water has calcium and is alkaline. So, I could start with an acidic growing mix, but it won’t stay that way for long from the water.
What About Irrigation and Drainage for Raised Bed Gardens?
How to handle irrigation and drainage for raised garden beds is straightforward and easily addressed. Make sure you install or put a plan in place for your irrigation at the beginning of the project. As far as drainage is concerned, you simply need to make sure you won’t have any water standing in the bottom of the planter box. This is important to prevent your plants from drowning.
As noted, irrigation should be installed, or at least roughed out, from day one. Automated or semi-automated irrigation is the way to go. We can be full of good intentions to water ongoing, but life and schedules happen, and you and your garden will suffer for it. We use a low-tech, shop-made PVC drip watering system. You can see an example of this watering system by visiting our DIY Garden PVC Drip Irrigation video. The video shows the system we use in an open plot, but the principle is the same for raised bed garden boxes.
A drip system is the way to go as it puts water right at the base of the plant, and saturates the root zone while minimizing the amount of water available to weeds. Because moisture seeps deeply into the root zone on a regular basis, your plants will be more drought-tolerant, grow faster, and be more productive. You can also install a fertilizer injector on your system and really boost your production!
As for drainage, you simply need to ensure that water doesn’t end up standing in the bottom of the raised bed. Standing water creates a bog, or anaerobic (depleted oxygen) conditions. Your plants will drown. It’s ironic that drowning plants look like they are under-watered, so many people just water more and hasten the demise of their plants. It’s a dead giveaway (pun intended) that the soil starts to smell putrid as the organic material and microorganisms in the soil die and decay.
What to do? Don’t overwater, and make sure your raised garden box has adequate drainage. If you set up your garden boxes correctly, you don’t need to water every day. Deeper waterings, spaced apart, with a good mulch cover is a great approach.
If your raised bed needs to be placed on a non-permeable surface, you’ll need to put spaces along the edge to raise the sides slightly to allow seepage. If you put down a weed barrier or something to stop vermin like gophers and other burrowers, it needs to have enough perforations to allow water to pass down and out of the bed.
Building a Raised Garden Bed
To build the vinyl raised bed garden bed we’ll walk you through, you’ll be using vinyl fence rail and corner post stock, along with the number of post caps you’ll need for your project. Although we use 5” x 5” (13 cm x 13 cm) post stock, you’ll have more flexibility if you are able to purchase plain stock that doesn’t have any fence rail socket cutouts. We developed a free set of raised garden bed plans you can download if you want to get started on this project.
Plus, you can watch our step-by-step DIY raised garden bed video if you want to learn how to create your own vinyl raised garden bed. You’ll love the results, as well as the reduced price tag for a beautiful, practical, and durable product. And, you can JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
Bottom Line
Raised garden beds are gaining in popularity, for good reason. Not only can you easily build a cheap DIY raised garden bed, but you’ll be adding a durable and beautiful feature to your garden. Plus, you’ll save time on weeding and it’s a great way to make efficient use of your space.
To learn how to make your own raised garden bed, feel free to watch our video and download our free raised garden bed plans. If you build this garden box or have any other raised garden bed ideas, please leave us a comment. We love engaging with our readers and viewers. In the meanwhile, happy gardening!
