Home generalBuild the raised bed yourself - free construction manual

Build the raised bed yourself - free construction manual

  • Material and preparation
  • Cost for a raised bed
  • Size and orientation
  • Free version of a raised bed
  • Raised bed - instructions to build yourself
    • Step 1 - Prepare floor area
    • Step 2 - Apply protection
    • Step 3 - Insert posts
    • Step 4 - Apply wood preservation
    • Step 5 - Fit pages
    • Step 6 - Fill

Raised beds are not only modern, they are also extremely practical. This applies not only to the plants that have many benefits from a higher bed, but also for the gardener who spares his back with a raised bed significantly. The construction of a raised bed is usually very simple, but should also match the garden and house in the look.

At first glance, working on a raised bed is a pleasure to work at a comfortable height. But in our often short summers, a raised bedding provides a free heat source for the plants. This also means a much extended gardening season. With some delicious vegetables from your own garden, you can grow up to three crops in one season. With an elevated bed, you'll make your job easier, but annoying voles or snails can make your work much more difficult with the raised bed. Therefore, we show you here in the construction manual, how to build a higher bed itself and secure against intruders.

Material and preparation

You need this:

  • spirit level
  • spade
  • shovel
  • wheelbarrow
  • ruler
  • pencil
  • stapler
  • brush
  • drilling machine
  • pegs
  • guide
  • corner
  • sledgehammer
  • screwdriver
  • sand
  • gravel
  • Palisades / squared timbers
  • post
  • in sleeves
  • point foundation
  • sand
  • Wood preservatives
  • fine wire
  • Screws (stainless steel)
  • earth
  • Scrub and branches

Cost for a raised bed

The prices for complete kits are often disproportionately high for the raised beds. As a rule, you will find it cheaper to have your own raised bed. A relatively simply made bed (from the trade) consisting of block planks, which are however only 28 millimeters strong, costs already around the 100 euro. This "cheap" structure only has a height of 60 centimeters and is only 120 by 80 centimeters tall. This is in the basic dimensions just a little more than a common composter, which you can also use for the rest, also for a short time as a bed.

  • Wooden post Douglas fir 90 cm long - 9 x 9 cm - about 15, 00 Euro
  • Roundwood palisade pine 250 cm long - 10 cm diameter - about 10, 00 Euro
  • Ground insert sleeve for posts 9 x 9 - about 3.00 Euro
Ground impact sleeve or support post

Tip: If there are many redundant trees on your property, or if a neighbor is perhaps clearing its trees, then you should try to integrate as many beaten trees as possible into your bed. The bottom woods of the bed do not last forever anyway, so it would be best to get them for free. However, these thick branches and trunks must also be debarked, at least in part, as fast rot rots under the bark into the wood.

Especially beautiful is a raised bed of thin birch trunks. In this particular case, the bark may remain on the trunks as it enriches the appearance. The supply of birch trunks you can easily pull yourself in the garden. So every few years a defective trunk can be exchanged.

Size and orientation

A square raised bed should have at most a side length of 1.20 meters, so that you can still comfortably approach the plants in the middle. For an oblong bed, it is also important not to make it too wide. At the same time, however, alignment with the sun is crucial for success. The narrow sides are optimally oriented to the west and east and the long sides corresponding to the south and north. So catch the precious sun with the full width of the bed.

Raised bed orientation

Tip: Depending on how strong your crossbars are, the bed border can bulge slightly outwards. This happens through the pressure of soil and garden waste inside. Important are therefore intermediate posts with a side length of more than about 1.20 meters and especially high beds.

Recommended for a high bed is a height of 90 centimeters. But that is a bit too general, because smaller people can not garden at a height. But just this convenience should finally be achieved with a higher bed.

Free version of a raised bed

You have less work and above all costs as a home improvement with the continued use of old rain barrels as a bed. Ask the neighbors if you do not have enough tons yourself, and the neighbors will be happy to get rid of the old leaking tons.

For this you make with a pot drill at a height of about 10 to 15 centimeters more holes in the bin. The holes may also be patterned to loosen the optics. Some fine wire mesh, which is glued from the inside in front of the holes, prevents the entry of vole mice.

In the fall, add small cut branches and garden waste to the bin until it is full. The coffee grounds should also regularly into the bin, as this prevents the mold of the earth later. In spring, then throw some earth and a little sand into the bin. Most of the stock of branches and waste has collapsed so far that you can add some mulch.

If you do not like the look of the old barrels, you can wrap straw mats or a balcony screen around the barrel. Even the painting of the tons is relatively easy.

Raised bed - instructions to build yourself

The ideal time to build raised beds is autumn. At this time of the year, you will receive a large part of the required , so to speak, delivered free to your home. The garden waste and branches, which you must dispose of anyway, can all be immediately inserted as a basis in the new bed. Any raised bed will take a while to become fully usable, the garden waste will have to settle first, so the bed now has time until spring to compact as you continue to fill it.

Step 1 - Prepare floor area

Depending on the nature of the soil and the vegetation, it may be necessary to excavate the soil about one spadick deep. Then pour some sand or gravel on the ground, so that no waterlogging in the bed can occur, which later leads to mold or fungal attack.

gravel

Make sure your bed is set up at a right angle. Insert small pegs at the four corners and draw a string between them. With an angle, you can now determine if the alignment is correct.

Align the posts with the guideline

Step 2 - Apply protection

Then spread a fine wire mesh on this prepared surface. Well suited is fine rabbit wire or the even finer wire mesh, with which basement shafts are covered. Thus, voles in your bed hardly have a chance. Even plants that spread too much over the roots, such as Jerusalem artichoke, for example, so get no opportunity to stretch across the garden.

wire cloth

Cut the wire mesh enough to allow it to be pulled up about 20 centimeters at the edge and fastened to the first two layers of cross stems. If the wire is not sufficiently wide, the seam is overlapped and folded twice into each other.

Step 3 - Insert posts

Sufficient long posts can be hammered directly into the ground, but these posts have the most pressure to endure. Therefore, it is better to set up the posts a little distance from the ground. Post girders or point foundations can withstand this strain longer because they do not rot.

Put wooden posts

Be sure to use a spirit level when setting up the corner posts, as the whole construction will be crooked and crooked, even if only one post is skewed. This not only looks ugly, but due to the high pressure inside it may soon lead to the collapse of the raised bed.

Step 4 - Apply wood preservation

Not everyone wants to coat their raised bed with wood preservation. But the construction lasts much longer, and if you use as gentle a wood protection, this does not damage your soil in the high bed. The side beams or palisades are painted with wood preservation before they are installed. You can also provide the vertical posts with wood protection before they are knocked in. So you have the opportunity to really reach all the places well.

wood stain

Tip: Some do-it-yourselfers use a pond liner to separate the bed from the inside of the wood. However, the lower layers of the squared timbers or transverse palisades can not dry properly and they basically only cause a damaging waterlogging in the bed.

Step 5 - Fit pages

First, the long sides are placed from inside the posts and at least partially screwed. Then screw the transverse posts for the side panels outside in front of the vertical posts. The short side parts do not have as much pressure to endure as the longer sides, so the superior gland is usually sufficient.

If you want to completely do without a screw connection, you will need a post on the narrow sides in the middle. Then all transverse posts or boards are merely stacked on top of each other. So that the side struts do not fall off easily, small slats are smashed on the inside. It does not matter if they rot soon, because they no longer serve any purpose after filling the raised bed anyway.

Screw the boards together

When you have reached a height of about 20 to 30 centimeters with the side panels, the wire mesh is stapled inside. If you prefer not to staple, then you can also pinch the wire between the horizontal boards or square timbers, so that the mice can not just slip through behind the wire.

Tip: If you have the opportunity to get cheap at old telephone or electricity pylons, you can build them up in log cabin style entirely without vertical posts. There are no screws or bolts needed for this construction. All you have to do is release the masts about 40 centimeters from the end so that they interlock.

Raised bed with tree trunks

Step 6 - Fill

Do not fill your new raised beds immediately, but always gradually. Throughout the fall and winter you throw garden waste into the raised bed again and again. At first mainly small branches and scrub. You can do that from time to time and stamp on something. Fertilizer does not need to be in a raised bed, because the higher temperature already ensures good growth and the resulting faster rotting compost, which is at the bottom of the bed, does the rest.

Fill the raised bed with compost

Later, some soil is mixed with shredded bark mulch. Only some horn shavings are mixed in the last two layers. This long-term fertilizer is absolutely organic and harmless. In later years, you should increase the proportion of horn shavings significantly, because the compost that results from the first filling is quickly consumed by the plants.

Tips for quick readers

  • Place raised bed in autumn if possible
  • Set material and height
  • Width not more than 1.20 meters
  • Break pegs in the four corners
  • Pull the guideline and check the angle
  • support longer side parts with intermediate posts
  • Insert fine wire mesh in the floor
  • Pull wire about 20 centimeters on the edge
  • If possible, do not place posts directly in the ground
  • Perform wood protection before installing the sides
  • install and screw in long sides first
  • then screw short sides outside
  • inside, staple or pinch wire mesh to the wood
  • Throw branches and scrub into the structure
  • Scramble down and give ground
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