How To Build a Raised Garden Bed With Wood?

Raised garden beds are one of the best techniques that gardeners love for a lot of benefits. One of the benefits included saving up a lot of space if you have a small backyard once you learn how to build a raised garden bed with wood.

In this article, we will be enlightening you about step by step instruction regarding building a garden bed. But before that, we will discuss the benefits of making a raised garden bed and how you will be preparing the place for building a raised garden bed.

Let us look at how chores in the garden can be made easier using wood to create a simple raised garden bed.

The Benefits of Building a Raised Garden Bed:

You need to get to the point of building a raised garden bed. Without knowing the benefits, it will not take minutes for your brain to brush off the idea. So, look at the benefits, and we are sure you will get down to building a raised garden bed.

• Good for your body: While gardening, we often bend ourselves that causes strain on our knees and the back. We all are well aware that bending down and kneeling is not right for our body postures. So, raised garden beds have a raised height that makes them easy and comfortable for you to reach.

• The health of plants improves: Designing a raised garden bed ensures better drainage, and the plants grow deeper roots that help them absorb more nutrition.

• You get to save up a lot of space: Raised garden beds gives you space to grow plants in an organized way. You will be able to provide the plants with better care. If you own a small space, then you will make the best use out of raised garden bed.

• You get to control the soil’s quality: You get to have a closer look at the soil’s condition. This allows you to take the necessary measures to improve soil conditions.

• The growth of weed is less: Raised garden beds have a lesser number of weeds and diseases. Weeds and diseases do not get the proper condition required for their development in raised garden beds.

Deciding The Size of Your Bed:

• Choose a location in your backyard that gets the proper amount of sunlight for up to 8 hours. You know well that sunlight is needed for plants to make food.

• The size of the raised bed should be 4 feet in width, not more than that. This is to ensure that you have access to all the plants in the garden without any difficulty. You don’t need to get the urge to step inside the bed.

• If the bed’s width is more than 4 feet, you will not be able to reach the middle. This will make it difficult for you to remove weeds, take care of the roots and harvest the crops.

• The length of the bed can be according to your wish. You can make the bed long up to 12 to 15 feet. But typical raised garden beds have a size of about 4 feet by 8 feet.

• Lastly comes the depth of the bed. You can choose the center, but thinking about the roots, the minimum depth of soil should be about 12 inches.

Now, after deciding the size of your raised garden bed, have a look at the instructions below about how you will be preparing the desired space for building a raised garden bed.

Preparing Your Desired Space For Building a Raised Bed:

• You will have to prepare the soil first before you prepare the raised bed. It would help if you used a garden fork to break up the ground and make it loose to improve the soil structure. Dig into the soil for at least 8 inches.

Then mix the layers of soil your dugout. This helps in improving soil texture and blend the nutrients to make the soil more fertile.

• If you are building the raised bed and grass, you need to kill the grass. For doing so, lay down a piece of fabric that will do the job of blocking sunlight to prevent the grass’s growth. After the grass is dead, it will be easy for you to remove them for digging up the soil.

It is finally time to build your raised garden bed!

Now, you might be wondering about what kind of wood you should be getting for your raised garden. There are tons of wood options, but we suggest using treated timber, also known as lumber. Timber is pressure treated, and it is safe for use in crop growing.

The timber treatment ensures that it does not rot because of moisture from soil and weather effects. Now that you know what wood, look at the step-by-step instructions listed below to get into building a raised garden bed.

Step 1: Get the timber board’s size according to the bed’s length and width that you are planning to build. Assemble the boards.

Step 2: Then, at every corner of the bed, place wood stakes so you can support them. The stakes should be placed inwards, not out of bed. Your bed will look more organized and pleasant to look at if the stakes are less visible.

Step 3: Place the stakes so that 60% of the part stays inside the ground and the rest of the stakes remain exposed.

Step 4: The stakes should have the same length. They should have the same levels so that the bed does not seem uneven after it is built.

Step 5: After fixing the stakes, it is time to set the board by fixing them. For doing that, you can use screws or galvanized nails.

Step 6: You are finally done with assembling your bed. You have to fill in the bed with soil, compost, and organic fertilizer for your plants’ healthy growth.

Final verdicts:

Lastly, we hope that by getting to know about how to build a raised garden with wood, you can solve a lot of your problems related to space, organizing, maintenance, and other components.

You will no longer need to move around the entire garden to take care of plants. Raised garden beds will help you keep your plants well organized, and you can take proper care.