AFTER your seeds have germinated and established themselves (or after you’ve planted plants, if you go that route), layer mulch on top of your raised bed. To calculate how much mix you’ll need for your raised bed, you can use this handy calculator.ĥ. In small batches, I dumped equal parts of my 3 components onto a tarp and then by picking up different ends of the tarp and flipping the ingredients around was able to mix it up fairly quickly and then dump it into the bed. (Mel is the creator of Square Foot Gardening.) The compost should be a mix of 5 different types. The recipe for Mel’s Mix is 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat, 1/3 vermiculite. Because you’re planting closer than you would with traditional rows, you have to use a high nutrient mix, which is actually soil-less. I’m using the Square Foot Gardening method, which is a way to maximize the amount of vegetables you can grow in a small space. Fill the bed with your planting mix of choice. It will compress a lot over time, and you’ll add to it as needed.Ĥ. You want a good 4-6 inches of mulch at the minimum. Get the cardboard sopping, soaking wet.įor the walkways, cover the cardboard with mulch. Trying to mow against the bricks is a pain.)Īnother bonus is that worms love newspaper/cardboard. (As you’ll see below, I’ve extended the cardboard in a 3 foot radius around my bed for a walkway. Remove as much of the staples, tape, etc as you can and then lay the cardboard down in a single layer in your bed. Avoid white cardboard, as it’s been bleached and can leak chemicals into the soil. You want brown corrugated cardboard without too much printing on it. Some people use a couple layers of newspaper, but I prefer cardboard. Instead of removing the sod with chemicals or back breaking labor, we’re going to smother it. If your bed is in the middle of your lawn, like mine, we need some sort of grass removal system. Lay out your blocks in the bed size of your choice.Ģ. But I soon realized that I could assemble and fill a bed that was 4’x10′ much faster, and thus I could start planting sooner.ġ. Originally I was going to do a few loooooong beds that were 4′ by 20′. I grabbed some scrap paper and a pencil and drew up some diagrams. Raised beds should be no more than 3-4′ wide so you can reach the whole bed from either side. Here’s a quick photo of the back yard, in it’s not-quite-spring-yet, grey and scraggly state: Just adapt these instructions to fit your needs! even cooler, if I decide to expand beds, change their shape, move them, or make them smaller, I just move the bricks one by one.īut hey, you can use whatever you want to make your raised beds.Standard 8″x8″x16″ masonry blocks, which I got at Menards for about $1 a piece. I decided to go cheap and ugly with regular cement blocks. Some go fancy and get landscaping rocks or bricks. Just pile up the dirt and organic matter and start planting. Some people do freeform beds without any supports. So I thought about suitable alternatives. once you make your garden box, that’s the size of your box.I don’t want poison around my vegetables. treated lumber has poison in it, and I don’t care how safe or how little gets into the food.I didn’t like the wood idea for a variety of reasons. You might be wondering about the blocks, since chances are most raised beds you’ve seen were made of wood. But now that we moved, I have a big empty yard that gets lots of sun! I built my first raised bed from concrete blocks (aka cinder blocks) a few years ago, though my garden wasn’t too successful because our yard had become much shadier.
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