Bed Construction

You can build a raised bed out of just about anything. A lot of the reading suggests going to construction sites for (s)crap lumber, and I have hears of using recycled materials and even concrete block. We decided on a low quality 2x6 lumber from Home Depot. The grain was pretty tight so it should be strong enough. What I mean by low quality is that it has knots and on one side of the board, one the edges has bark on it. It sells for just over $2 for a 8' board.

To build one, you will need 7 2x6 8 foot boards. Have the guy at home depot cut 3 of them in half for you. Then I used 10d (12d might be better, I had a lot of them bend) 3"nails. The image above shows the basic construction (not to scale). When you're done you'll have 2 frames that measure 4x8 feet. You can obviously make them any size you want 4x4, 4x6 or whatever.

Before you nail the center beam in place, make sure the bed is square. To do this, measure from the INSIDE corner 3' down one beam and make a mark. Then measure 4' on the side of the ajoining beam and mark it. Next you will measure mark to mark. It should be 5'. If it not then you will need to adjust your box some. After it is square, nail in the center beam.

After you have built the frame, place it where you would like it to be and mark the ground. I used spray paint to mark the inside of the box to the ground. Then use a square trench shovel and cut down through the soil along the outline of the bed. After you have made a complete outline, start making slices though the length of the bed every 1 foot. Then make slices going from front to back of the bed. When you are done you will have basically slices the turf into nice neat squares. (Angela says, it's like cutting up a sheet cake)

Now, slice off the turf top and set to the OUTSIDE of where the bed will be. Dig down below that with a shovel til you have dug down about 12 inches. Use a fork to loosen the soil down even further. Do this for a single row the length of the bed. On the next pass, you will put the soil in the trench you just dug out. It will not all fit in there so you will have to mound it up on the outside edge of the bed. When you placing the soil back in the bed try to put the top layer of soil at the bottom. I found this to be next to impossible but maybe someone has some insight on this.

What ever you do, DO NOT STEP ON THE AREA YOU HAVE DUG UP. It will pack the soil and it will make it hard for air, worms and roots to penetrate. These are some photos of a bed being made. Ang and I were so wrapped up in building them, we forgot to take some pics of it.

After putting all the soils LOOSELY back in the bed, I placed the frames back on the area I just double dug. Here in Florida, the soil tends to be very sandy and our place is no exception. So for each 4x16 bed I added 160 lbs. (8 cu ft) bags of topsoil, 160 lbs of composted manure and 1.5 cu ft of peatmoss. We used a hard rake to mix it well. My first bed, I used 2x4's to secure the bed to the ground, but the second one i did not. The soil does a fine enough job.