How to Build a Raised Bed CHEAP and EASY

 

Raised bed ,Backyard Gardening:

 I love designing and growing them but I also love other practical and convenient ways to grow food that's what I want to share with you today how to build your own cheap and easy raised bed garden let's go if you saw my last video.

 

 Then you know I recently just took out a Red Delicious apple tree that I had planted in this section the reason I did that is because this hazelnut tree was just doing so well has just gotten so large that it shaded out this area way too much for that apple tree to produce and to do well. That's the reason I couldn't graft onto it or anything because it's just not getting enough light.

 So I took that tree out right here and to replace this tree what I'm going to do is be building a raised bed in this section and there's a few different reasons why I'm doing one of the main reasons that I want to grow a raised bed in this section here and not just plan how I usually do directly into the ground is because I have this hazelnut tree behind me some of the other trees here and I don't want to disturb those roots this way by putting a raised bed in I'll avoid a lot of those issues that's the same reason people like growing raised beds in sections that are hard clay or if they have really rocky soil you can avoid some of those issues you're gonna run into by putting a raised bed in let's start building another reason I'm going to be building a raised bed here is because I'm running out of space to play my annuals with my new food forest and the trees are getting bigger the strawberries are starting to spread so I'm just running out of space to grow annuals and things.

 Because I love planting them I love my tomatoes my peppers my lettuces and everything like that also a good reason to have a raised bed is if you're planning on growing in a section that you're renting or you're not going to be living there for a long time you may not want to waste a lot of time building your soil through mulching and stuff which can take years because you know you're gonna be out of that section soon so a raised bed it could be a good option for that we have all of our wood here.

Now the dimensions of the bed are gonna be 4 foot by 8 foot as you can see we're not using pressure-treated wood because we don't want the option of any of those chemicals or anything that's in it to mess with what we're growing and I'll talk more about the wood that I'm using as I progressed the wood that we're going to be using are 3 2 by 10s so 10 inches in this height right here at 8 feet long and then three two by fours at 18 feet long as well the only thing is the two by fours are just a little shorter than the 2 by 10 so we're gonna have to cut the 2 by 10 it's just a little bit bucks out here.

 

Relax and watch me and if don't feel comfortable cutting the wood yourself or you can do is if you go to Home Depot or Lowe's just make sure you have your dimensions before you go there and then let them know what they are and they'll cut the wood for you I had them do that for me before and they do an excellent job because they have a track saw it gets everything Square and perfect so let me just mark this here and then we're just gonna cut it with a skill saw for the cost of the two by tens you're looking at just over eleven dollars for the cost of the two by fours they're just over two dollars and you could do this without the two by fours to make it even cheaper but it's not gonna be as convenient as I'll show you we got the two of them cut and now they're all the same length so we like to say we cut those two two by tens down trim them just a little bit.

And I don't know why exactly that they they're not the same length as a two by fours but we'll deal with it next we're just gonna cut this piece in half and then one of these will be our top one the bottom and then these two are gonna be our size I got all my wood cut and before I start to build it I wanted to clean out this section here because I don't want to have to build it then move it it's gonna be pretty heavy when it's done so you're going to want to build it in this section that it's going to be i..

 

I have that section cleaned out now if you have grass here you may want to put down some cardboard or even some contractors paper but if you're going to go tend to stick like me you should be okay even just leaving it unless you have some strong perennial weeds next I'm going to be screwing this all together after I have it staged in the spot that I want it I'm going to be using three inch deck screws so they work well outside they're not going to rust or anything I don't want any rust in the garden and they're strong and long but first before we get to put those screws in we're going to want to pre-drill just so we don't split the wood and we're gonna have we have a countersink bit on here as well so I'll show you how to do that this wood right here is an inch and a half so we're gonna want to go about 3/4 of an inch in halfway we're gonna put four screws in just make sure it's strong and then that countersink just makes it so the screws won't stick out we got this screw started here.

Now we're gonna do our best to make it as flush on the top and as the back as we can make it okay that's one of the sides then we've got three more to go so let's keep going [Music] okay that's the last screw it looks good looks nice and square I'll check it again at the end but now I want to show you what the idea was with cutting the two by 10s in the same length of these two by fours so I can put these two by fours up here as a rail this isn't 100% necessary but it's going to help help hold the whole thing together. It's also going to be a nice little area for us to sit and reach into the bed so what we're gonna do is put a few pieces of wood in here to the inside this way.

I have something to screw that screw down to on this side and on this side here for this section here basically making these little cleats I'm just gonna cut this 8-foot piece into one foot sections this way I can get eight of them and you could just use scrap what if you want I just didn't have any on hand so I had to buy this extra piece [Music] okay I got these cleats all done.Now I'm just gonna put one here up like this one up here as well and then I'm gonna put two at the ends to kind of straighten everything up and make sure I have them flush at the top they're got the last support in it's coming out real well I'm happy with the way it looks and there's not much left to do so this build is almost finish.

 

And I can't wait to start getting a filter then get growing now let's get this side rail on make sure it's nice a good length. I checked for square it's all square which makes it easier and to make sure it's all square you're gonna want to make sure you get good wood take the time to select the wood make sure it's straight make sure it's not bowed make sure it doesn't have any cupping in it so what we're gonna do is first attach one side and then see if we have to bend it bend this at all if this is straight enough this board let's get this one corner in this first screw is going to go in the board that's parallel with it this other screw is gonna go in the one that's perpendicular so it's gonna lock the whole thing together [Music] I got those two sides in those rails my drill battery started died on me a little bit so I'm skipping a couple spots where the screws are gonna go but I'll go back and put those in next.

I need to cut a piece just to fill this gap in this section right here so instead of having to measure it I'm just gonna take my piece of wood hold it up and then just mark it I have this bumped up against the side then I'm just gonna mark from over the top then we'll just cut that to life we got that cut to length should be good it's good like that now we're just going to pre-drill there we go I got the final piece cut now we just have to drill it in there we go last screw and it's looking great tuk-tuks over there looks like.

He dug himself a nice deep hole see what he's doing he's hanging out underneath the shiso and all this she said we have so much of it growing here but I didn't want to take any of it out because the bees have been loving it it looks like tuck likes hanging out underneath there hey boy dug yourself a nice deep hole huh boy he's really deep down there you must have been getting hot he was getting a little bored I think watching us so he looks like he's a little bit tired even to what a good guy so relaxed so it doesn't look like tucks having as much fun with this video as he does with some of the other ones but that's okay he's still out there always behind us there were some hearts in the comments and you guys love to see and talk if you like him being a part of the whole garden the channel and everything with it he seems super relaxed right now I just made sure this is all level leveled this way and then level this way also then I check my diagonals it looks good what I did was dig out this section here which was a little high rather than propping any besides up because I wanted to be too basically on the ground and I'm not worried about this rotting that much even though it's not pressure-treated it should last a good five six maybe seven years.

I don't have any posts into the ground because that'll just make the rot happen even quicker and I'm not worried about it bowing out too much because I got these side braces and also I'm only ten inches high and if when I put the soil in that's gonna really add a lot of weight to this whole bed so I'm not worried about it shifting too much because this is a good sized bed as you can see though if I sit on the rail here I can easily reach into the center so this will be good this was just to check the level.I'm gonna be taking that out now we're gonna start filling it with soil the first thing that I'm going to add is peat moss and this can be slightly acidic but that's okay.

 

Because the rest of the bed I'm gonna be filling mainly with black leaf mulch which I get for free locally and that's highly alkaline the only issue is it can't really retain moisture so am i adding this it's gonna greatly increase its ability to retain moisture I'm gonna dump this in get some black leaf mulch and mix it all together and then I'm gonna add some my own homemade compost the best stuff you can grow with all right here's the first load of the black leaf mulch.You can see it's got a nice dark color to it so we're just gonna shovel all this in good local free resource that's another reason I wanted to do the raised bed because I knew I could get this locally for free so what I want to do is shovel all this in and I'm going to mix it up with the peat moss so it's almost like building our own soil because this mulch is high it's nutritious it's alkaline but it's just like I said it's not it can't hold water well it dries out quickly and then once it gets dry it's really hard to make it absorb water again.I'd say about 10 more wheelbarrows.

I'll be done what I'm gonna do is after I get some more loads and just come and just mix it up I'm gonna use a pitchfork to do it but we'll mix it and get a better composition that's today's video gross thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed it I hope you got something out of it the raised bed is finished the building of it it looks fantastic. I'm super happy with the way it came out all.

 I have to do is continue to fill it up with some more black leaf mulch mix it all together get a nice composition so we can start growing things then I'm gonna build one more but I'll show you next video what that all looks like.

 I hope you are encouraged to know that you don't have to have a whole food forest to grow your own food a raised bed is fine just a couple potted plants on a balcony is fantastic too.