Building Simple Garden Beds

This year is the time for me to finally go crazy on gardening now that I have the space to do so. Below is my process and results of making my garden beds.

Planning

This year we were able to give the yard a makeover and in the process plenty of space for me to add some garden beds. Since we wanted to keep a large space for us and the pup to play, we settled on creating a boarder of beds along the fence line.

The next choice was what style and material to use. Since there will be more plants and general costs to my garden this year, we decided to go with a cost affective and easy to adjust version. So, we went with the cement block and wood modular system. At first I was not super excited about the look, but now that they are made, I actually really like them! The ability to adjust and replace old wood pieces as needed should be really nice season to season and they have a natural subtle look which is what I wanted.

Day 1 of Building: General Layout and First Four Beds

After waiting a while for a warm day to really start this process, it was finally time to get the true layout figured out. We decided to go with the typical length that the wood is sold as (8ft) to save time and have nice long beds. This way for the main beds, the only cutting is the side sections, which we made 2ft to easily divide up the wood. So with that figured out, we measured and laid everything out to see how many beds we can fit and I got to work. The process for building these beds is very easy which was nice, so the most work was really getting the mulch pulled back and making sure the measurements work in the space.

Eventually we plan to line the sides to keep the wood in good shape and will evenly fill the base of each with the compostable materials we have been collecting. So, once the beds were put together, I divided up the cardboard and compostable items we currently have into each for storage and to get them more broken down. I am so glad we had a nice warm day to get the bulk of these first four beds complete. It is that time of year where one day will feel like summer and the next it will snow. We got lucky with some warm days being on a weekend so we could take as much time as we needed. And as expected, it ended up snowing by Tuesday, so we will have to wait for the next set of warm days to get more materials and continue.

Days 2 & 3 of Building: Finishing the Layout

Once the weather warmed up a bit, it was time to get the last few beds put together. In the moment, I forgot to video the process, but here is the final results for they layout. Our next step will be to level the beds since the hill is fairly steep for them, and then cut the side pieces and build them to the height we want.

Days 4-X of Building: Leveling the Beds

We plan to spend the early part of this summer getting the beds leveled. We are a bit behind on our initial plan of fully planting this year, but other fun plan have gotten in the way. So now the goal is to use this season to finish them correctly and get them ready for a full planting year in 2025.

Process details and videos coming once we get around to it. ;)