Having your very own garden is a great way to have fresh and tasty fruits and vegetables just feet away from your home. The type of garden you choose to have can vary greatly depending on your location, size of your yard, type of fruit you plan on planting. After some thinking, we decided to go with a raised garden bed designed in such a way to complement our yard and home. This choice, in my opinion, was superior to a ground-level garden due to the fact we have four boys and a large poodle that most certainly would trample our hard work accidentally at some point during their playful summer days.
Planning
We decided to build a garden bed that consisted of three separate sections. The tallest section we had built in this garden bed was primarily for raspberry bushes. Since they act as a weed and spread through their vast root system, the walls of this section are 24” high at their shortest point to prevent the bushes’ invasive thorns from appearing in our lawn and elsewhere. The lowest and our largest section will be used to grow our favorite vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers. And our last smallest section, constructed from wood, would grow all our herbs.
Placement of your garden is the most important part of this build, constant direct sunlight will dictate where you will place your garden. So, consequently, the sun is making this decision for you. Luckily we had an area in our yard that gets about 10-12 hours of sunlight during the summer days, which was our only option.
Excavation
Due to the size of my project, I thought it would be best to dig a wider footprint than the wall itself to act as a footer for the wall.
Building Forms
Building the forms for the concrete raised garden beds was quite expensive during the COVID-19 lumber shortage. Plywood sheets, which are much stronger, were going for around $100 a sheet at the time of me working on this project. Which lead me to use a much cheaper and weaker, I don’t recommend using, 3/4” particle board sheets which were $30 a sheet during that same time.
If you do end up using something other than plywood sheets to build your forms, it’s not the end of the world, you will have to add more wood stakes and reinforcement braces to compensate for the more fragile sheets.
Irrigation
Before pouring your concrete, make sure to get all your irrigation lines complete. I tapped into an existing single sprinkler head, which the garden beds would permanently seal, to provide all the irrigation I would effectively need for all three levels of my garden.
First I added a pressure reducer to the line which reduces the pressure to 25psi, then I split that mainline into three individual lines for each separate section of the garden. Each section was then attached to drip irrigation lines where I attached misting heads.
I initially added sprayer heads instead of the misters only to realize they were flooding the garden beds. I was not able to change the duration of the valve since it was tapped into a current sprinkler head that was used for my lawn. Adding an independent valve for the garden beds is an option, but I would avoid this at all costs. Trenching through the lawn and modifying the valve does not outweigh the benefits of a separate line, in my opinion of course.
Pouring Concrete
There are two options to pouring concrete for a project this size. Hiring a cement pump truck (~$400) and ordering premixed cement (~$120/ Cubic Yard), keep in my mind you need to provide an area for them to wash out their equipment. Another option is mixing bags of cement (~$4/bag) using a wheelbarrow or mixer.
My project had two phases of concrete pouring which naturally led me to the latter option due to cost.
If you are able to find a few friends to help you, you would be in a much better position than where I was. Not to discount the help my young children afforded me by preparing a certain amount of water for each load every time. Still, the lifting of 80lb cement bags does wear you out in a hurry, in my project I used about 120 bags (total of 9,600lbs.)
To prevent air pockets in my concrete I used a hammer drill, set to the hammer setting alone, I would use it against the form walls every now and then. Also great when leveling out the cement as well.
Since I used particle board, I was unable to reuse it in other parts of this project. The process for the next concrete section was identical.
Setting Posts
For the last section of the garden beds, I decided to contrast the look with stained wood which would be attached to pressure-treated posts set in concrete.
I precut and installed all the wood prior to staining the wood, this would allow me to stain all raw cut edges and drilled holes all in one go. I wanted to use tongue and groove cedar planks which hold up very well to outdoor conditions, but my local Home Depot was out, and instead, I went with their 1×6” white pine boards.
Staining
I used a deck stain which advertised a 7-year finish guarantee, mind you this is for traffic areas, and I don’t expect anyone to be walking on my garden bed. Since I was using a lesser wood option, I applied 4 coats total.
For the interior of the wooden garden bed I used galvanized steel roofing sheets, this would prevent the soil from contacting the wood and rotting it prematurely. I originally used metal snips, but quickly changed to the grinder with a metal cut wheel to cut these to size. I also used self-tapping screws to install them to the posts.
Stucco
To finish my concrete raised beds I used a premixed stucco with a medium texture. I ended up keeping the base color of the stucco, but you can paint it with any exterior paint from your local hardware store.
Soil
I called a local nursery to get a special garden soil mix which they also use for their own gardens, I paid only $160 for four yards of soil which also included a delivery charge.
The last step was to finish setting up the mist heads and planting the two raspberry bushes I had sitting in the pots for the last five or so months. We will now be ready to plant starting spring of 2022! Hope you enjoyed our build, and if you are interested you can watch a time-lapse of this project below on our YouTube channel.
Disclosure
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