How We Made Our Home Garden Raised Vegetable Beds

Spring was about to commence and we needed to start thinking of a project that the whole family can

enjoy. If your family loves home gardening as we do, here’s a great project for the budding gardener in

your family – raised vegetable garden beds.

It’s just a simple frame of rot-resistant lumber that holds soil in place and brings it to a height that’s easy

for everyone to reach without stepping onto precious plants—plus no more dirty knees (or at least

fewer dirty knees).

We have made raised vegetable beds around the house a few years ago and we all love them. They

provide good drainage for our plants, organization and more flexibility about where to plant different

things. We have bed exclusive for herbs, beds for bush and vine vegetables, and beds for lettuces and

others (for fresh salad). Our kids have tons of fun caring for their seedlings as they mature. And what

better reward is there for a garden well-tended than a nice ripe tomato right from the vine.

Building up a raise bed is the easiest thing to do and makes gardening easy. And if you build them

yourself, it will bring you a great sense of satisfaction. We built our bed with rot-resistant cedar, a

material that’s safe around edible plants. Cedar will also turn a nice silvery gray as it weathers.

The bed we have here is 10 feet long, but you can make

yours as long as the lumber allows and the space available

you have. However, it should be no more than 4 feet wide so

that little arms can reach the plants in the middle. We used

angle frame bar to hold the frame in place and keep the

sides from bowing once it’s filled with heavy soil. Vegetable

gardens need a lot of light, so we placed the bed in an area

that gets sun for most of the day. To improve drainage and

prevent weeds from growing up into the garden, either you

remove the grass beneath the bed and till the earth before

adding soil or what we did we put a weed barrier from the

store underneath the framed bed or you can just use

flattened cardboard box so you don't need to spend.

We framed 10-ft long 2x10 wide bed and 8-ft long 2x10 wide bed. The longest board you can buy from

lowe's with the width of 2x10 is 12 feet. We cut two 4-ft long from the two 12ft long lumber we had so

we can use them for a 4ft by 8ft bed frame.

Hold one of the 10-foot 2x10s on edge, and butt the end of a 4-foot 2x10 up to it so that the face of the

longer board overlaps the end of the shorter board. Using the drill/driver, sink three 3-inch screws

through the face of the long side and into the end of the short side.

Attach the other sides together, using three 3-inch screws on each corner and overlapping the long sides

over the short sides.

With the four sides assembled, place a framing square in each corner, one at a time, and adjust the

frame until the corner lines up square. After aligning the entire frame, check all four corners again with

the framing square.

Leaving the corners perfectly square, we screwed an angle frame

each corner to hold it in position. Then staple in a weed barrier

sheet on the bottom or use flattened cardboard.

Move the frame to the sunny spot you've picked out for the bed

and fill with the perfect soil you need for your vegetables.

The great thing about a raised garden is that you can put in the

perfect soil for whatever you want to grow."