How To: Building a Raised Bed Garden

This weekend we spent some much needed time outside. Mother Nature gave us a beautiful, sunny 70 degree day Saturday...and then it snowed Sunday morning. She is a fickle lady. But we were still able to get some things done, and the dusting of snow we got overnight melted away quickly. We have four raised beds in our garden but decided to add a long bed between the original four beds and the fence, which is what we worked on on Saturday and what I am going to write about today. Shout out to our friends Simon and Emily for keeping us company and helping out with building our box! Work is always better with the company of friends. I've had a few people ask about our raised bed and how we built them, so I took (far too many) photos yesterday and am going to provide some simple instructions on how to make them yourself.

working hard - i believe emily and i were sitting
on the deck eating girl scout cookies at this moment

I don't want to take over our yard with our garden. Well, I actually DO want to do that, but I'm trying to be reasonable. If we at some point sell our house I don't want potential buyers to think we're insane/worry about having to pull out a massive garden area if they're not gardeners. So we opted to add a 15 foot box in between the current boxes and the fence. It doesn't extend into the yard any farther and Nathan doesn't have to squeeze the mower back there - win win! Building the boxes is very easy. If you can work a saw you can bust these bad boys out in a day.

Here's what you need for one 6x3 raised bed:

• Drill
• Measuring Tape
• Saw - we used a 10 inch miter saw
• (6) Cedar Dog Eared Fence Pickets - 6 ft by 6 in
• (2) 1x2 Furring Strips - 8 ft long
• (1) 2x2 Furring Strip - 8 ft long
• Screws - we used 1.25 inch exterior screws

You can use other types of wood but here are a few reasons we went with cedar. 1) It's not treated with chemicals which is a good thing since we're growing food in these boxes. 2) It's weather resistant which means it will last longer than something like untreated pine. 3) It's cheap! A 6x3 foot box (that is one foot tall) requires six cedar fence panels and at $2.50 a piece, plus the furring strips, that's less than $20 per box for the wood. Not bad at all. Now that you know what you need, here is how we built them:

raised bed sketch (click to view larger)

First off this is my husbands sketch of the boxes. The little pieces on the outside are the 1x2 furring strips. Their purpose is to hold together and add support to the sides of the raised bed. The longer pieces you see extending below the bed are the 2x2 furring strips and what you drill each side into so that the box stands up as a box. We made ours longer than the box and hammered them down into the ground. This gives extra support because as I mentioned in a previous post our garden area sometimes floods...a lot. At least our garden stays well watered...? Onward:

here we have cut off the dog ears
...because that doesn't sound weird at all

1) Cut the dog ears (the rounded parts) off your pickets.

2) Take two of the cedar pickets and cut them in half. These will form the short sides of your box.




3) Cut your 1x2 furring strips as tall as the height of two boards laid next to each other, which should be about 12 inches. You need 3 furring strips for each short side and 5 furring strips for each long side; so you need (16) 12 inch furring strip pieces total.

4) Pre-drill two holes in each furring strip piece. The furring strips are thin so pre-drilling your holes decreases the chance that they will split as you drill in the screw.

nathan pre-drilling the holes and simon working the saw!

one of the short sides of the raised bed

5) Lay two of the 3 ft pieces next to each other and attach 3 furring strips (pictured left). Repeat with remaining 3 ft boards.

6) Lay two of the 6 ft pieces next to each other and and add 5 supports. Repeat with remaining 6 ft boards.

nathan holding the furring strip in place and a
view of the furring strip from the inside of the bed

7) Now you will attach the four sides to each other. You need to cut the 2x2 furring strips into 2 foot pieces. Hammer them down into the ground until the top of it is about level with the height of your sides (it helps to have an extra set of hand here to hold up the sides). Drill two screws through the side and into the furring strip, and then through the other side and into the same furring strip. Repeat this for the other three corners.

8) Lay down some weed guard and fill your box with dirt. This was my job and despite the fact that half our bags of dirt were mud I enjoyed it. Don't be afraid to get a little dirty!





9) Optional step: find an adorable helper that enjoys digging in the dirt :)

In the end the bed we built ended up being 15x3 feet. This is wonderful because it was like adding on two more boxes without pushing the garden out any farther into the yard. Up next: adding a fence to keep pesky puppies out of the garden. We are building the picket fence ourselves, which sounds impressive but it's pretty simple. I will have a short tutorial on that after we finish it. I am also working on a container gardening post, it should be up this week!

the finish product...with a nice layer of snow! so happy to have the extra space

 Thanks so much for reading, and of course if you have any questions or if anything is unclear please don't hesitate to ask in the comments section!



-Kelly