Ideas for raised beds?

I think the best border for a raised bed is river rock. Just lean the rocks in a little as you build the bed up.

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These are all such great ideas! I definitely recommend the John Kohler videos as mentioned by bassmaster17327. Also, I recently got a copy of the Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew, and I love it. You can make those raised up high enough so that older folks don't need to do all the bending. I've also been trying out container gardening using the 5-gallon pickle buckets you can get for free at delis, bakeries, etc. By stacking two together and putting holes in the bottom, they make great self-watering containers so you don't have to worry about over/underwatering. Great step-by-step instructions in the book Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers by Edward C. Smith, my favorite gardening book. Works like a charm, and I even have some things growing indoors and doing fine.

Don't use treated lumber at all. The treatment can leech into the dirt and from there . . .

Also, I'd recommend you not use commercial compost either. You can't tell if there's Round Up treated organics in there. That's what stunted or killed off my garden last year - it was the only difference and it killed two of my gardens dead.

Something like this perhaps?


You can paint the insides with Food Grade Shellac and really slob it on or, just put a liner in. If you go the liner route, don't use colored plastic as there might be lead in the material.

Check out the square foot gardener.

http://www.squarefootgardening.org/

justin time -- what you built reminds me of what I saw in the Yucatan. The Mayans there use raised beds, but they are actually more like tables with sideboards. That is the best way I can describe them. They built them from small logs and straight branches lashed together. The soil they put in the raised bed was highly organic, so it wasn't as heavy as if it was your normal mineral soil. These raised beds required no bending over at all, and they would completely eliminate gopher problems. I've wanted to build one for years but haven't got to it. Don't know how it would work in a cold climate, but I guess yours does fine since it has a greenhouse built on. And yours is also on wheels!

A guy from there cuts the bottom off of containers and uses them as small raised beds.

I have found the hieght to be perfect, so much easier to garden when everthing is that high, and gives me a place to set my beer while gardening. I did a underground (below grade) green house, that had a 3-4 ft deep trench down the middle, this too allows me to walk down the trench and just reach over, I call it no bending gardening, Great for those of us getting grey hairs...

Cold climate? did you look where I live? The whole box is insulated with that pink board, R5 I think, with the top on , it keeps the heat in over night, and helps warm the mass of soil durring the day. I can be picking tomatoes from it almost to Nov, late oct any way, weeks past the time that the frosts have killed the garden.

Great ideas on here, uh oh, now I am considering some new implementations... Here are a few pics of mine:

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www.squarefootgardening.com is an excellent site on container and raised bed gardening. Mel Bartholemew's most recent revision of the book contains a great section on container raised beds on sawhorses etc.

As my own physical capabilities began to decline I used SFG variations applied to my greenhouse worm bins from modified ABS plastic truck and construction site toolboxes which I already have raised on sawhorses to plant my indoor raised bed container garden so I can easily tend and harvest from a standing position or sitting in a chair beside the bed.

I am currently raising potatoes from 20 sprouted tubers. 6 cherry tomato plants, some hot peppers, a bin of lima beans and a bin of carrots I planted in the worm casting / compost mix and continue adding mulch as the worms consume the lower level of the leaf mulch.

BTW the red worms make wonderful farm hands indoors and outside.

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I think Id build VERY heavy tables about 30 inches wide. That way you could roll a wheelchair UNDER them Then with 8 inch sides full of dirt you could garden by the squarefoot very comfortably.

I use the Fridge and freezer method because its more comfortable standing up But I think you could use some of them on their sides for the table method above.

Great idea, I bet I could grow spam in that type.

There is an elderly lady up the road from us that gardens on a wagon bed similar to the one shown in justin time's post.

Also, I saw "somewhere" on line where a man built beds on what appeared to be tables and had a pretty big garden IIRC.

This is not the one I referred to, but it's the same principle:



Here's another:



Yet another:



As much as I don't feel comfortable with raised beds (old school row gardener here), I'd be willing to have a go at it again if I had those in the last pic!

There is a local guy who builds and sells raised beds on legs with greenhouse type hinged covers. He is doing very well financially building them!

A year ago, I was looking at a property for sale and saw the best raised bed area set up, ever. That is based on my opinion, of course. What the guy did was build forms for concrete walls. They extended to between waist/chest height for average height person standing up. I don't have a pic, but will try to describe it.

Envision a main path with legs branching off. Each leg was a pathway, perpendicular to the main path, and on either side were these walls. The guy had filled in the spaces with good topsoil/compost and that is how he gardened. No bending or stooping at all. The width of the beds was approx 4 feet, and soil depth 3.5'+. He planted peas and beans in other areas, but all other shorter varieties were planted in these beds. Now, if his design were shortened, the paths widened a bit, and connected to a path on the other side, this setup would be perfect for wheelchair access. What I liked so much about it? These were built to be permanent.

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I'ld like to know what type of bottom holds the weight of all that soil for those raised beds the person in wheelchair is tending....anyone know?

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Try and find old scaffold planks. I managed to aquire these ones for €3 each.
I have only used single depth in my poly tunnel but you can double the height if you put them on top of each other. very quick to screw together and solid.

WHERE Did you get this Picture? THIS IS EXACTLY what i ment!....only better!

Here is a photo of the Mayan raised bed I mentioned above (post #45). These are filled with organic soil (like compost) so the weight is not so much. This particular one was at the University of Yucatan where they were working on making them from different other materials. This is the traditional version.

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That mayan raised bed is really interesting. The trouble with ones I've seen locally made with demensional lumber is that they are pretty expesive and deteriorate fast. But with that mayan bed, although it would not last as long, would be cheap to replace.
You know, I have some rounds of redwood that are just sitting decaying for legs and I had three tops of redwoods come down this year. I see raised strawberry beds shaping up.

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Right click pic, hit "View Image Info"...it should show the original location already high-lighted.

I just googled raised beds, hit the images button, and scrolled until I found something similar to what I saw a while back.

I am thinking of doing something like this...


Or this