Cheap Raised Bed garden


  #1  
Old 05-30-05, 08:15 AM
Clamslayer
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Cheap Raised Bed garden

Hi,
I have a easy raised bed garden plan if anyones interested. I'm new to gardening this is my 2nd year at it( I'm not an expert). I have a small house on a small lot( 82x128) that has a backyard with a southern exposure I live in southern RhodeIsland. Most of the yard is shade but some of it gets full sun. I have no idea why I started a garden, one day last March I just started turning over the soil in the sunny portion of my yard with a pitch fork and added limed to it. My girlfriend had an old mother earth organic garden book I found in the cellar that offered good garden information. I did'nt want to use chemicals in the garden so this book had an alternative method to growing veggies (and as it turn out flowers and other garden plants). I learned a raised bed will produce up to 40% more yield than a regular garden will. I'm a born and bred swamp yankee no joke, I'm a commercial Shellfisherman that has never spent a dime on anything I did'nt have to, I never throw any thing away either. I had some pressure treated 1"x10"x 16' that I scrounged at the dump in my garage I used this to build my beds. all you need to do is basically build a box with no top or bottom thats it,I used 2" deck screws to fasten it together. mine are 16 feet long by 4 feet long by 10" high. I wanted to use manure to fertilize the garden so I remembered seeing horse poop piled high at a park used by horsemen here in my state, since then I found 3 places I can get it free. I filled my beds half way up with the manure and the other half I used compost from a pile that I started a year earlier. That is it. my first year I grew 21 types of vegatables. they all grew like crazy. I gave more than half of my crop to my nieghbors cuz I had more than I could use. At the end of the year(oct.) after most of the plants had passed I removed the dirt and replaced it with manure and hay mixed together. I then built a removeable frame over the beds covered it with translucent plastic and had a hot bed. It produced cold hardy plants the whole winter And we had the 2nd worse winter on record here. go figure if I could do it anyone can, and it cost me 1.29$ for deck screws thats all I've invested in it plus my time. I just finished a raised bed flower garden for my girl I will have to see how it comes out.

ps
the computer I'm using came from the dump also I just installed a modem in it
who said nothing in this world is free?

Mike from rhodeIsland
 
  #2  
Old 05-30-05, 09:39 AM
majakdragon's Avatar
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Thanks for sharing your wonderful idea. We often forget that we can use what we already have to make what we want and not spend a lot of our hard earned money. There are many ways to obtain free materials if we just look and ask. I am sure many of us have things stored away that we have forgotten about. Prices of veggies and other items have gone through the roof and the best way to save money is to grow your own, even if you only have a small area in which to garden. Watching my new plants grow from a tiny seed into a bountiful harvest gives me a sense of accomplishment that equals no other.

FIY and others also. Raised beds should never be wider than you can reach 1/2 way across comfortably. Any wider and you will have to actually walk or kneel into the garden soil. This leads to compaction and is not good for the developing roots.

Good luck with your gardening projects.
 
 

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