It seems like most of the winter I’m living in expectation of Spring. This season is the time of the year when I can’t wait to get out of the house and get my hands into the soil and feel the sun on my face! It’s the place that I feel the most peace, where I feel the closest to God and more in tune with who I am, if that makes sense. I used to have a beautiful garden on our previous property but this property that we are on now has proven to be a bit more of a challenge. But generally I don’t quit when presented with a challenge especially when its something I truly love to do! Last year I decided to build myself a raised bed to plant some things in for the year. My husband wasn’t able to help me due to another obligation so I set out to build it myself. I tried to go with something that was economical but would hold up well without much maintenance. I went with concrete blocks. A lot of times you can pick these up at job sites (with permission of course) when they are done laying block and have a few extras. Even if you have to purchase them the cost is minimal compared to other materials. Here are the steps to build your own raised bed.
Plan the size of your bed- Measure out the length and width you want the bed to be. Place stakes on each corner and measure from one corner across to the opposite corner to make sure the bed is square. The lengths and widths should be the same from corner to corner
Place a weed barrier down on top of the grass, no need to dig up sod. You can also use several layers of newspapers and wet it down.
Lay cap blocks down along string line- Make sure you get the cap blocks that have a solid side and lay a row of that all the way around.
Line up next row of regular sized block on top of the first row. Make sure you stagger the blocks so the cracks don’t line up. This will give it more structural integrity
Of course you will go all the way around the structure.
Irrigation tubing- We went to Lowes and purchased irrigation tubing with a hose adapter on the end. Take a drill and make holes every couple of inches and lay it down the middle of the bed with the hose adapter end coming out the end of the bed for ease in watering your bed by just simply attaching a hose.
You can either buy something to stop the water flow from coming out the other end or just pinch the flow off like we did here so the water will slowly trickle out of the holes instead of the end.
I painted the block to give it a more appealing look and here you can see the irrigation hose coming out of the end.
This is the finished product. I planted strawberry plants in the holes around the outside in the block. They are thriving there. I was forced to put up a little fence to keep the chickens out who loved to scratch around in it for fun!
Updated: The strawberry plants did not do to well shortly after that. We get very hot dry summers here in Tennessee and I think with the block surrounding each plant as it was it dried the plant out to much and also created to much heat for them. The plants were relocated to their own bed and I have plans to put a top cap around the bed. I was able to remove the ugly fence as the chickens have been moved so that’s a plus!
This is great!!!!
Thank you Cheryl!!