off topic gardening

Re: off topic gardening

Virgil Johnson

Just curious..Why do you need the bed to be raised? Poor soil? I've never understood the concept of a raised bed.

Re: off topic gardening

mike van Pelt

I am old and fat and hate to work on my knees!

Re: off topic gardening

AZ in Colorado Springs

My SIL made some wooden boxes for gardening at their townhome balcony. He used white cedar. Holding up well after several years (so far).

Re: off topic gardening

Jack Guzman from Maine

You could stack railroad ties. I've done this using large spikes in the corners. Lumberyards often stock these. Discarded from use on a railroad. They rot but it takes a long time. Of course they are usually treated with creosote.---Jack

Re: off topic gardening

John McGaw

Two things: 1. I'd really rethink your dimensions -- with an eight-foot wide bed you will not be able to easily reach the center without doing those physical things you desire to avoid. 2. It really doesn't matter if the material is 'poison' if it never touches the soil. It is common to line the inside of treated-wood boxes with pond-liner material (with suitable drainage holes on the bottom of course).

Re: off topic gardening

Barry Irby

John nailed it. Whatever you use, line it with pond liner or even polyethylene. It will keep whatever poison is in the wood away from your veggies and help keep water away from your wood.

Also, a narrower bed would be better, one you can reach the center of from both sides.

AS I recall, some research was done on the poison getting into the food and they could not detect any, no matter how they tried. OTOH, there is no reason to take the chance.

Good soil and good drainage are very important.

Re: off topic gardening

Virgil Johnson

Good enough reason.

You don't mind the creosote?

Have you read about straw bale gardening? *LINK*

Dick Coers

Straw should be pretty reasonable in your neck of the woods. Basically no weeding.


https://modernfarmer.com/2013/07/straw-bale-gardening/

Re: You don't mind the creosote?

Jack Guzman from Maine

I wouldn't make a bowl out of it but the worms don't seem to mind. These are old beams. They don't give off much odor.---Jack

Re: off topic gardening

Chuck Bjorgen

I agree with John McGaw’s suggestion to build narrower raised beds. I used 5/4 cedar and built several beds that were 4 x 8. The boards were about eight inches so I still had to kneel to hand work or set plants. I’ve had both hips replaced so I built a kneeling bench that made the job easier for me. The shorter eight foot length made it easier to walk between various beds.

We removed our vegetable garden three years ago and while the cedar boards showed some degradation after 15 or so years they were still useable. I now raise a few tomato plants in pots but that’s it for my gardening now.

Re: off topic gardening

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Cement blocks are poison? I would like to see the explanation of that claim. Anyone believing that claim better avoid farming on limestone derived soil for the elemental constituents will be identical. But then nobody gets any attention unless they make alarming claims. The most of the fretting over chemical exposure is about getting attention, not fact based informing.

While I don't get the attraction of raised beds I would use rail ties if I was making one. They are cheap, they last forever, they are heavy enough to stay in place and loss of water through the bed sides would be minimal.

Speaking from total ignorance about raised bed gardening I don't see how the water management in the bed can be easy or labor-free. Success in gardening depends on water management, getting rid of water when it rains too much and delivering water to where the roots are when it rains too little. With the huge reservoir of earth beneath a normal garden these issues are largely taken care of by the two way flow of water through the soil column. I know that I would not have the discipline to manage water in a raised bed.

Re: off topic gardening

Clementine

My experience: Raised beds have two benefits. They warm up quicker than a ground bed. That may be important in a colder climate, but here in Texas, warm soil early in spring is not a problem. Second is better drainage. If you have heavy soil, a raised bed will give much better drainage than a ground bed. Good drainage is critical; a garden that stands in water more than a few minutes is not going to produce very well. There is a huge difference between soaking and drowning. As for being easier to work, a 3-4’ wide bed is all you want, certainly not an 8’. It’s your garden; try stuff. Cody Goodknight, a farmer in Chattanooga, OK, quoted in Progressive Farmer: “If I never have a failure, then I am not trying enough new things.”

Here's another thought....

Barry Irby

Use some of the plastic deck boards

They are expensive and kind of flexible, but if I were using them I would go to the local Borgs and find damaged ones. The local Lowe's recently sold some for about 25% of new and they were not badly damaged.

Drive a row of stakes on about three foot centers and set them on the inside. Use whatever suits you for stakes. Locust, treated pine, rebar, steel fence posts, etc.

I built two flower beds in what turned into a clay bathtub. Put a drain tile in the bottom and replaced half the soil with sand and compost. Never looked back.

Soaker hoses are a wonderful thing.

Drip irrigation for water management

Re: off topic gardening

johannaj

I have six raised beds in my garden. Two are 8' x 3', two are 6' x 3', and two are 4' x 4'. The two 8' beds are 12" boards set on concrete block. One of the 4' x 4' is made of 2 x 120s. The other three beds are made of 2 x 10s. This year I'm going to add another 8 or 10 inches to those three beds.

All beds have hardware cloth at ground level to prevent gophers. The two 8' beds have a layer of black plastic over the hardware cloth to conserve water. I made a watering system for each bed by drilling tiny holes in a pvc pipe layout. Because our well water has lots of sediment, I have to clean out those holes periodically with a thick needle.

Why raised beds? They are easier on my back, they are gopher-proofed, and they hold water better. This is an extremely arid climate, so any kind of watering technique that sprays water into the air is undesirable.

A 4 foot wide bed is the absolute maximum - I prefer 3 foot wide beds - easier for me to reach the center.

Re: off topic gardening

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I calculated an estimate of the water the raised beds would use and it was a surprisingly(to me) modest amount. When I irrigate the garden/orchard it is a several thousand gallon episode, only practical because I live along a river and the water only costs the gas to move it from river to land.

Do I understand correctly that you have a water barrier between the bed dirt and mother earth? I suppose you learn how much water to add to not make the dirt soggy at the water barrier . Where I live one of our 3" rains would make a raised bed with a barrier bottom a swamp.

If the bed is not flushed with irrigation water how do you deal with minerals accumulating in the soil through evaporation and drastically altering pH?

An irrigation supply place will have a filter bed that will eliminate your particulate plugging problem.

Re: Have you read about straw bale gardening?

Tony - Memphis

My dad has not been well for a few years now, but he really wanted to grow something. He threw a couple of bags of dirt where they landed, cut a few slits and they became his raised beds! They worked quite well actually! Not much to look at, but after the season, he cleaned up the plastic and left the dirt in place I believe. I see a lot of folks using 2x lumber, but we have so many termites around here, I don't think they would last long. But maybe that's ok too.

Tony