In our backyard, I use raised beds and pots for my gardening needs. I use raised beds because of the organizational part of it and because I have better control of the soil. No one has ever stepped inside my raised beds. Each bed is no wider than 4 feet, and that makes it easy for you to reach inside the bed. You will find the dirt in the beds to be very fluffy and full of earthworms, and you need the earthworms to aerate the soil. I have ten raised beds in our backyard, and they function very well for our gardening needs.
One easy way to build your beds is to use a local lumberyard or a big-box store where you can buy the lumber and they will cut it for you to fit your raised bed design needs. Cool!
The image below shows the machine they use to cut the lumber to your specifications. So, let’s say that you want to make a 4′ x 4′ bed, but they don’t sell lumber of such length. So, you can buy lumber that is 8′ x 8′ and have them cut it in half. Easy peasy!
Below you can see several pieces of lumber stacked in our Toyota Matrix.
Below is an example of a simple 4′ x 4′ bed made with 2 by 4s. This is my herb raised bed.
More content here later…