Dinnercraft helps bring your (and our) protracted adolescence to an end. Our authors cover topics ranging from cooking and eating, to home and garden, to crafting and DiY, and all the rest of the things you find yourself caring about these days.
Build Your Own Raised Planting Bed
Submitted by Malcolm on June 17, 2009 – 2:10 pm2 Comments
For under $200 and with even the most basic carpentry skills (cut wood, screw together, etc) you can build this perfect raised planting bed out of rot-resistant cedar, for easy growing of vegetables or flowers.
We like this version because it thinks to include bases for hoops for either anti-bird netting or row covers, as well as gopher and mole prtection in the form of a base of metal screening. These are the details we often forget about when planning projects, and its nice to see them so clearly presented. So much for laying around all weekend!
If you’re going to go to all the trouble to build a raised garden, you may as well make it high enough so you don’t have to bend over. We have a community garden where I work, and the raised beds rock…no more achy knees and backs.
Raised gardens are also good for keeping the pests/soil contaminants at bay. Planting in the ground = you never know if you’re sowing seeds on top of what was formerly a Chernobyl-esque reactor site, or gas station, right? I saw some neat eco-gardening w/ raised gardening tips several years ago that involved primarily newspaper as a foundation for the soil. Have been meaning to do it, but have no room for this in our postage-stamp suburban lot.