Published on 22 April 2020

Build a raised garden bed

A simple, DIY raised garden bed will help you grow plenty of cheap food with zero food miles. Raised garden beds are good for your plants, good for you, and are good fun to make.

Go on, fill your garden with the types of vegetables you like to eat.

Why build a raised garden bed?

A raised garden bed has heaps of great benefits.

• Once built, it’s ready to grow nearly everything

• They prevent soil compaction and the frame prevents soil loss and erosion

• Gardeners can plant earlier in the season because the soil is warmer and better drained

• You choose the size, shape and purpose of your raised garden bed (build it up higher if you have back problems) or use it to separate growing areas from kids’ playgrounds and pathways)

• With raised beds that are 30cm or higher, the extra root depth can provide more nutrients, allowing you to grow plants closer together

• Because everything’ is encased, you can fill your raised garden bed up with all the very best soil, compost, mulch, and fertiliser.

• Plant roots grow deeper into the ground to get more nutrients.

• Re-using wood pallets helps to reduce the amount of landfill waste

Building a raised garden bed

Step one: Remove the middle plank, using your crow bar

Tip: Remember the crow bar works best when you give it leverage, so if you are struggling put an extra piece of wood under the crow bar to help with leverage

Step two: Take the planks and line them up for each board. Use the small pieces and the awkward ones to make the side pieces. Hammer two nails for each plank on each side.

Step three: 5. Do this four times and you should get something that looks like this/

Tips and other stuff

Use heat treated wood

Look for Heat Treated Pallets (they have HT written on them somewhere), these have not been chemically treated so they will not leach nasties into your garden.

Do not close the bottom

A bottomless garden bed allows plant roots to grow deeper, and access more nutrients. Your garden’s soil ecology will stay healthy via worms and microbes, although you’ll still need to add a bit of compost from time to time.

Protect your wood with natural preservatives such as raw linseed oil

Linseed oil makes the wood water repellent and it’s safe to use on surface in contact with food.

Locate your garden bed in a sunny, flat area, on top of soft soil

Pretty self-explanatory - gardens like sunshine, flat surfaces are more stable and top soft soil means that roots can grow deeper and access more nutrients.

Don’t forget to mulch

Any biodegradable material spread over the surface of the soil as a covering is called mulch. Great mulch is made out of newspaper, grass clippings, leaves. These materials help your garden to retain moisture, as well as suppressing weeds, and moderating the soil temperature. Mulch can also improve the soil’s fertility as it decomposes.

Try square-foot gardening

Breaking growing areas into small sections can make gardening more managable. Also, some plants grow well together, while others don’t as much. Squarefoot gardening is way to address this issue.

Don’t forget about crop rotation

Seeds are the only things that allow for new annual plants to grow the next season. The seeds are dormant - meaning they are not active - until the correct time of year, during which they will develop and go through their entire life cycles.