Raised Bed Ideas Garden Tour

I had some questions about building beds, so I wanted to share this.  We have a variety of sizes and materials we have used.  We don't want any beds over 4 feet wide.  If you go wider, you can't reach the center without stepping in them and that is a raised bed 'no no'.  It compacts the soil.  But, we do have some wider beds so we just make a pathway down the center to walk in.  We did not put anything in the bottom of the beds before adding the soil.  If there was fescue grass that was there, we sprayed it with Round Up. My first box was a 4x4 and I used 1 part peat moss, 1 part bagged cow compost, and 1 part vermiculite.  It did fine.  After 4 years we now we have our own super compost going from recycled garden materials and leaf mulch which we had hauled in from the nearby city leaf disposal place and chicken manure that Jeff gets from a guy up the road that has chicken houses.

We have used the cheap landscaping timbers for beds.  They are not holding up too well.  Some poles are already rotten on a few of the beds.  That's a waterline in the middle.  After sowing some lettuce we put straw on top to help with germination and it tends to keep the lettuce leaves cleaner after a rain.

This is a cattlegate from Tractor Supply that is put in straight.  We will probably put our green beans here this summer.  This is one of our favorite sizes.  I think it is 3 feet wide which allows us to plant a row on each side of the gate.   

This shows our double cattle gate arch held in place with metal fence posts.  These arches are nice for sugar snap peas and butternut squash, cucumbers, etc.  We plant 4 rows of sugar snaps (one on each side along the gates) and then we have room to plant other bush type plants such as brocolli in the open area between the arches and the outside of the boxes.  (The background of the first picture shows what you can get with leaf mulch and lots of churning with the tractor tiller.  It is NOT Stoke County clay!)

We have treated 2x12's and 2x10's for beds that are 4x4 and 4x8.  Some are stacked 2 high so that you don't have to stoop over so much.  The taller ones also give lots of root space for things like potatoes.

Flashback

We moved to Stokes County because the "Northern Beltway" around Winston-Salem took a swipe out of the middle of our family farm off of Hwy 65.  But that's another story....The land we left was some of the best in the state for farming.  It's yield had taken top place more than once.  Stokes County dirt just isn't as friendly.  We planted our garden with high hopes those first 9 years.  We amended the soil with dump truck loads of goodies to no avail.  When it is dry, it is indeed like a brick.  When it rains, it becomes a slippery, mushy, muddy, nightmare.  Our garden was like a huge ceramic bowl with no drainage hole.

At church, we had been promoting self reliance through square foot gardening for a couple of years.  I experimented with 3 beds, 4 ft square done the Square Foot Garden way...2x10's with a soil mix of potting soil, vermiculite and peat moss laid down on top of landscape fabric in the box.  It worked ok.  Then one day our church group took a tour of a local man's organic farm in King.  Mr Moser was nice enough to tell us everything he could and show us around.  It was very inspiring and in 2009 Jeff took over the gardening and began our real transition from traditional row gardening to using beds. 

Gardening is always a work in progress.  If you have questions, let us help you out if we can.