I am building a new enclosed raised bed for my fiancé and me and I wanted to see if there were any tips and tricks on how to best set up the bed. I have the bed walls all made and am planning on fastening them to 4×4 posts and then framing in the upper enclosed portion. For the bottom of the bed I was thinking hardware cloth (since we have voles, rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks) then a layer of leaves that didn’t get bagged up from last years fall, then a thicker layer of logs-twigs progressively getting smaller to take up a good chunk of the volume and reduce the amount of soil which I plan to top everything off with.
I used pressure treated 2x4s to frame in the beds and lined them with sheet metal roofing to isolate the soil from the pressure treated wood since I know in the past pressure treated wood was not a good option and I’ve seen mixed reviews of the new stuff. Is it recommended to seal in the corners where the walls connect with some sort of membrane to further isolate the soil from the bed frame or is that amount of contact negligible?
I included some pictures of the overall plan and a progress photo. P.S. sheet metal roofing is SHARP, I walked by a stack of it and sliced my leg up pretty good and had to take myself to urgent care to get stitches so if you’re going to use the stuff be sure to be extra careful!
Any other recommendations that I am not thinking of are always welcomed!
by Financial-Swim1237
3 Comments
man if youre going all out on enclosing the whole thing you might as well turn it into a hoop-house greenhouse lol
looks good. How wide is the pathway?
I recently built something similar in my greenhouse. I put weed barriers underneath the beds (we have invasive english ivy everywhere). The bottom foot I filled with logs from around the yard and random scrap wood, then filled the rest with soil.
Screwing the corners into a post is the move- I messed this up and had to improvise to get it to work. Ideally you’d screw them into a post in such a way that no soil is touching said post (because it’s either pressure treated or going to rot).
My plants are real happy in this bed. Mulch and water deep!