Raised Beds

I apologize for the lapse in posts since May of last year.  I have been preoccupied with a (formerly) pregnant wife and new baby boy (Fox)!

This return post will be about the new raised garden box I just built.  Last season, I noticed that some of the plants may have been suffering from poor drainage, and that many of the areas in my garden plot were hard to reach.

To fix the accessibility and drainage issues, I decided to start adding raised beds to my plot.  I wanted something modular that I could add to the garden piece-wise, so I didn't have to invest a huge amount of money at one time.

Based on my design requirements, I built rectangular frames out of 2 2"x6"x10' redwood boards.  I used steel corner brackets to make the frames have orthogonal corners (properly square).  So far, I have built two frames and stacked them.  I used scrap redwood to hold the two frames together, and wooden stakes to hold the frames in place on the ground.  I did not put a barrier between the box and the soil below it. 

The plastic sheeting is used as a cover for the cold frame.  Eventually I will add the automatically opening door I built in a previous post.

I mounted 3"-long 1"-diameter PVC pieces to the corners and middle of the top frame so that I can insert curved PVC  pipes for a cold frame.

I put 6 cubic feet of organic garden soil from Home Depot in the box, which filled it about 1/3 of the way full.

In the box, we planted 1 row of cabbage (Golden Acre), 2 rows of beets, and 2 rows of radishes (Champion).  The seeds are from a variety of sources, mostly obtained from the annual Salt Lake City seed swap.

The small packet of beets is Early Blood Turnip Beets, distributed by Slow Food Utah.  I am especially excited about them.