A raised bed garden for everyone!

[This space reserved for a picture of the raised bed with plants in it!]

At a time when commercial produce continues to spike in price without seeming letup, many a person might get it in their heads to do a little gardening on their own. After all, raising your own food has got to be cheaper than going to a local grocery just for the privilege of buying a solitary bell pepper for a buck! But, hold on! Isn't a garden a lot of work? Don't you have to buy expensive soil and what about the cost of obtaining vegetable starts from the greenhouse? And oh my, all that work what with the tilling and the weeding and – well just forget about it!

Fortunately, I've got some good news! Almost anyone can install a small raised bed in no time at all! Scrounge together four wooden boards, some nails and dirt and you're in business! The boards pictured at right

were were laying around my garage and measured about 36 inches each – after removing the nails that held two of the board together, I had my 'pre-cut' pieces that when formed into a square enclosed an area of about 2.8 feet by 3 feet or 8.5 (or lets just say) 9 square feet overall! That's 9 one square foot areas into which we can plant all sorts of good eats! So far I'd spent about ten minutes scrounging and preparing... not too shabby!

Next, I needed to assemble the boards by nailing them together – happily, I had eight nice looking nails that came from those little cross pieces, so I was all set in that department. But, I still needed to pre-drill some holes to help make the process of nailing then together a little easier. I'm all about easier....

So, out came the drill with which I quickly made eight pilot holes for the nails to get started in. But, before I did that I needed to clear out the grass in the space where my little garden was to go! After all, I wouldn't want grass growing up through my garden soil – would I? Gosh no! The answer, however was easy – I merely dug a shallow trench where the boards would rest (I used a level to make sure they were level with the ground) and then I merely covered the area with weed block material that was available form my local hardware store for a few bucks! Total time to dig the trenches and install the weed block was about 20 minutes. None of this work was very hard either!

But, what about that soil – how much would I need to fill in this empty space. OK, let me see now. The depth of the boards were about 5 ¼ inches – so I estimated I need the thickness of the soil to be about 4 inches – therefore, I needed 2.8 x 3 x .33 feet which equals 2.8 cubic feet.  Another way to figure this is to know that since the area was about 9 square feet, then a height of 12 inches of soil

would equal 9 cubic feet. However, I needed only a third of that height (4 inches) and so one third of 9 is 3)! Voila! You can get 40 pound bags of soil at garden centers for about $2-$3 a bag – and since each bag will cover about 3 square feet to a depth of four inches – I'd need about 4 bags! In they went, and you can see the nice result – a raised bed! That's $8 spent thus far with labor running at about 1 hour. Now it was time for selecting the plant starts that would go in each square! The soil was then going to get a few days to rest.... and then... comes the planting!

I'd already purchased 2 cucumbers ($2) and also had 8 peppers that cost $4. The basil was sown as seed as was the carrots. The sole open spot was left over for anything that might strike my fancy later on! The peppers that come later this summer, will pay the estimated total cost for this setup of $15 pretty quickly. But, I'm not ready to plant anything in this space yet! I need to test the soil to make sure that especially the pH is within acceptable limits!

Next post: Testing the soil!While you're waiting - run out and buy a copy of Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening!