Raise the Beds! Holla!

This weekend, we built our raised beds. There are 3: one 4x5.5 ft, one 3x20 ft and one 3x10 ft as shown here:


We used the basic instructions that can be found everywhere these days: the latest Better Homes and Gardens, Square Foot Gardening book and Pioneer Woman's blog. We used untreated pine (treated pine, while no longer treated with arsenic, is treated with chromium which the jury is still out on) but seriously considered Trex (a recycled plastic/wood fiber product), but that was a bit more than we wanted to spend at the moment. When the pine rots out (I've heard it should last at least 3 years if not more) then we'll probably replace it with Trex. We also used 8" deep boards instead of 6 or 4 inches.

The stakes have a dual function: help support the pine boards from the pressure of the soil and to create a bunny fence (chicken wire will be nailed to it).

Here's a bit of the garden plan:



And, here is how I'm SFG'ing the beds. Nylon string + nails.


If I had to do it over again, I would follow the SFG advice with just having beds that you can't access on all sides be 2 ft deep. Yeah, rebellion didn't work out so well...Turns out it is really hard to plant in beds that deep.