Beautiful DIY Metal Raised Garden Beds | Complete Guide

hey everybody welcome back to another nature's always right episode today we're getting into how to build your own raised beds whether you're going to do a similar design to what i did or just do straight wood or cement blocks or whatever you want to do there's going to be lots of tips in this video to help you regardless of what type of raids bed you're using we're going to get into some planting tips amendment tips how to fill this up with soil some of the specific things that i'm doing for these raised beds because they're so high to make it more inexpensive to fill these up to make them more moisture absorbing and to add long-term food sources for microbes and your plants and of course we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of how to build these exact boxes that i built and building these boxes using the metal saved me about six hundred dollars and got me another six to eight inches in height for my beds as well opposed to using just wood because many of you may know wood prices are out of control right now in the us this video is sponsored by hoselink huge thank you to hoselink they sent me out one of their hose reels i've seen tons of different youtubers and instagram gardener people using these so i've been curious to try it and i love this thing i put this in the center of my garden so that it will reach anywhere around this area it's 82 feet long and it will actually reach all the way to my blueberries which i was very excited about so be sure to stay till the end i'm going to give nature's always right viewers a special discount code thank you to hoselink for doing that for us and i'll show you how this thing works and how to install it all that good stuff so first let's just get into why did i set up raised beds in the first place versus in-ground beds which i have right in front of me so when i showed these beds off on instagram be sure to follow me there if you're not already so you can see all my updates and what i'm currently working on they asked me stephen why are you doing raised beds versus in-ground beds and the easy answer to that is they're easy to work on basically no weeds you don't have to bend over as much and we just wanted you know this is right in front of our house so we want it to look very nice and we have a property that we own now and it makes more sense to invest in infrastructure and some nicer things now so some of the negatives to raise beds you might want to consider if you're deciding between the two of course they are expensive in comparison to just doing in the ground this is not ideal if you're trying to grow an enormous quantity of food or if you want to be a farmer raised beds are not what you should be doing it doesn't make sense for a home garden for a homestead for all those smaller quantities of food this is the way to go i think it just makes things so much easier but i also i can't run a direct cedar in here so radishes beets carrots salad mixes anything like that i would have to seed it by hand which is way more work i can use my earthway seeder out there so my strategy for these raised beds since i don't have to bend over as much these are for things that i will be replacing more often or something that is easier to manage within a box for instance if you wanted to grow watermelon or winter squash something that's going to vine out and grow crazy well what you can do in a raised bed is plant it at the corners and even these zucchinis as they grow longer you can push them up and out of the bed and which will actually create more growing space that you could plant lettuce or something low growing so anything that vines out if you're going to put that in a raised bed put it in the corner of your bed so it can go up and out and not take up the entire grow space of your bed that's what's so great about in-ground beds is that i can do anything that vines out there i can use my direct seeder so having the combination of both gives me the best of both worlds so the materials for my beds are yellow pine wood galvanized roofing tin many people have asked me steven is there is it dangerous to use a zinc coated galvanized metal no it's not at all don't worry about that the only danger to the zinc coating is if you were to like burn this metal that gas would be toxic so this bottom board here is a pressure treated board i use all pressure treated wood for anything that was touching the ground some people may feel comfortable to use pressure sheeted wood for all of their boards i'm personally not i want to stay away from any and all chemicals to the best of my ability now they do use a much safer chemical than the creo arsenic that they used to use many decades ago i think it's now it's a copper um like anti-fungal type of treatment now to help resist rot so you just have to decide that on your own now natural wood alternatives cedar or redwood are the top types of wood that are naturally rot resistant now because wood's so expensive i just didn't want to go that route another great way to get cedar they do sell it in i think six inch wide boards so if you want to do a cheaper smaller raised bed that's only six inches tall you easily do that with cedar using those smaller boards and it will be cheaper so that's a great another option for you so the other big question is why did i build these so tall these are about uh two and a half feet tall well after cutting down a ton of trees on my land i had tons of logs left over so what i wanted to do is create a hugelkultur bed type setup so what we did is we buried logs at the bottom layering the biggest logs first going up we covered those logs with wood chips left over from the stump grinding that we did so this is all free material so far we filled it up to about right there now all that carbon the logs and the wood chips are going to absorb moisture and they're also adding bulk to our bed this is now area that's taken up by free wood that we don't have to add in compost i was able to add in six to seven wheelbarrows of of my mushroom compost to the top here that's basically all that's in each of these beds that save me an immense amount of money on compost now all that carbon is going to break down over time adding nutrients to the soil extreme moisture absorbing when we get our huge rain events here in tennessee all that moisture is going to be absorbed and locked in down in that wood layer so these roots if they run out of moisture in the compost layer they can dive down to the carbon layer they're going to be able to get moisture there so it's going to really lower the amount of watering that i'll need to do and raised beds are notorious for drying out a bit quicker so one other possible negative of these beds metal right is going to heat up in the sunlight so this will help you in the winter to warm up soil in the summer it could cause some drying out of your beds i have not really noticed any of that honestly and when i put my hand on the other side of the metal it is warm and some of the soil and the soil touching that metal is warm but very quickly right after that the soil is not warm anymore so in my opinion it's not going to really bother things too much roots i don't envision roots going up against this that won't happen but they can stay an inch back and be fine that's been my observation of building these metal type raised beds you know i've done wood raised beds if wood was cheaper i just would have used wood and i wouldn't have done this so when it came to the nutrition for these beds we had our logs our wood chips our six wheelbarrows of the mushroom compost and then i layered on top about one to two inches of the super compost that i made in a past video which you can go watch about how i created that which with all natural inputs the base is a rabbit manure and straw combination this has biochar in it other natural farming inputs and i layered that on top so that when it rains the high amounts of nutrients are going to infiltrate down into the soil and get locked into the soil and then the carbon layers down below it's another great thing about having all that carbon below that's going to soak up nitrogen you know when it rains or whenever you put out fresh compost some of those nutrients will be released by the compost and the water and go down into the lower layers and you've probably seen that if you've ever watered and over watered a pot and you see the brown water running away that is some of the nutrients are running away now for minerals what i added was azomite and kelp meal and i just mix that in with a rake and then i finished by putting this on top and that's all i did for my nutrition for these plants and they're growing really great now the first year that you start a garden or a raised bed don't expect the same results that you'll get years down the line every year if you're using no-till living soil principles your soil will get better every year your plants will be healthier every year more nutrient dense every year if you use the techniques that i teach on this channel and other regenerative farmers around the world teach so now i want to share some of the mistakes i made to help you build better and stronger boxes so you may see that this board is bowing out intensely this is the worst one this happened for many reasons this board is warped some of the boards that i got from the mill were kind of twisted and messed up so that's one benefit to going to home depot or lowe's you can pick each one of your boards to make sure that they're perfect so it didn't like fit together perfectly the other issue is when leveling this bed i should because the slope's going this way i should slightly tilt it back up a little bit so that the weights going that way a bit more so it's putting pressure here so here are a couple ways that you could fix this or prevent this one simple take a two by four span it across bolt it in it's gonna hold it together now the other thing that the birdies raised beds this let's say an australian brand of raised beds probably the best in the in the world honestly and they on their metal raised beds they use a metal like an all thread like one of those long pieces of of metal and it ties in on both sides you know throw some wing nuts on something like that with some washers that would hold it together and that made me maybe another good option i'm going to let this play out and i'm going to see what happens to my beds and fix them if need be because i want to see you know what else ends up happening something i overlooked a little bit i was trying to save as much money as possible on wood and supplies um i think this for all my supplies i think it cost me twelve hundred dollars and i have some leftover wood and tin that i'm gonna use for a chicken coop but um twelve hundred dollars for all that stuff so it was quite pricey and i was trying as always i'm trying to you know find the best deal do things as efficiently and as easily as possible to show you guys but when i do that sometimes it causes some problems because i should have built this a bit beefier so those are some things for you to think of and watch out for when you build this you know maybe i put some more support pieces here on the sides there's a few ways you can go about reinforcing this to make sure that this does not occur putting putting in corner pieces as well that i mentioned earlier okay you guys so let's check out the best hose reel on the market this thing is going to save me a lot of headaches you know i've used hoses on gardens over the last you know 10 years and i've always dreamt of a hose reel that worked really well and i think that this is probably the best option out there so what this is it's an 82 foot hose reel they give you this base plate that's crazy strong i even stood on it because i was pretty impressed by it now a lot of people will install these on posts in their garden i decided hey why don't i just throw this on the back of a bed so i took a nice big chunk of wood put that in put the base plate on and i was good to go now the hose here connects back to my house in the future i'm going to set up a a permanent connection with polyline to the faucet going under the landscape fabric to here and then it'll just be like be seamless from there it swivels so wherever you're going in the garden it follows you now for watering this part of the garden i just pull it out and they have this great little ball on here that helps you pull it and i'm even pulling this at an angle on this thing it's not pulling straight out and it still works great i've also i'll reel it back in from this position too so what's so great about this thing is it locks open so now i can go around water what i need to water and when i'm done i just pull back on the hose that clicks and now it retracts you know obviously i haven't used it very long but it's very well built the pulley system and whatever you know works within the reel is very well engineered um i tried pulling this thing in and out from different angles as you saw i was pulling it against this side you know it's probably better if you let it reel in straight on but it's able to do it either way i went full out the whole 82 feet and let it reel back in and it still had enough power to be able to do that it has lead-free fittings everywhere so in addition to giving you everything you need to install it they also give you this fantastic multi-sprayer that is excellent quality that's going to last a very long time i can tell it's better than anything else anything else i've gotten online before and they also have this special adept i hope you got turned off they have this special adapter system which i thought was pretty innovative and they give you a bunch of these other adapters because there's other accessories and things that you can get for your hose link and it just snaps together like that but it's let's say you had their wand attachment you just have these quick connects boom and now i'm watering again so very cool very innovative very well engineered so go check out hose link here is the discount code for you guys and thank you hoslin for sponsoring the video and just creating wonderful wonderful products so to build these boxes you're really only going to need a drill and some screws and that's basically about it an optional tool that i chose to use was this is called a craig jig and this just basically allows you to drill perfect pilot holes to create a really clean look this is often used in cabinetry making it's about 90 or 100 bucks for the kit and they give you the drill you need a clamp and all these other accessories they sell these special screws for the kreg jig but you do not need to use those i use straight up just three inch construction screws you just want to be careful to not over penetrate the wood so that's why you can't see these screw holes here and basically what this did is it saved me having to toenail into this board to attach it toenailing is when you would take a drill pilot hole in at a 45 degree angle and then drill your screw in this side and this side this side and that side okay that just will be a bunch more work you're going to be doing this many many times if you do a bunch of boxes so this makes this a little bit more streamlined and cleaner and i want to use this on other projects so that's why i purchased this but that's a little more info on how to do the centerpiece so now i'm going to show you how to construct one of these 12 by 3 foot raised beds for the cut list for each bed you're going to need two pressure treated 2 by 4 by 12 foots 2 treated 2 by 4 by 36 if you'd like detailed step-by-step instructions on how to build these raised garden boxes including cutlass to make your work more efficient check the video's description below for the link to go download it it will be available soon so i'll use a chop saw to cut all of my pieces out be sure to double check your measurements so that this will fit together as perfectly as possible so one tip when you're making your cuts where you put your mark if you were to cut right on top of that mark it would end up a bit short so cut slightly to the right of that to get it perfect the next step is to use the kreg jig to drill out four holes where our screws are going to go if you are not using a kreg jig this would be a great time to drill your toenail pilot holes or you can wait until you're assembling it when using the kreg jig be sure to squeeze the trigger so that it becomes super tight and the drill goes in smoothly right at the spot where you need it so we are using two by fours and the actual measurement of a 2x4 is 1.5 by 3.5 inches because we have a 1.5 inch thickness according to the kreg guide you'll need a two and a half inch screw now you do not need to use the expensive kreg screws i used two and a half inch construction screws be sure to set your kreg collar to the correct length which is 1.5 inches so you drill to the correct depth if you are toenailing i recommend using a three inch construction screw and you'll need three inch screws for the rest of the project drilling together all the pieces okay so i've taken all the pieces that we made and drilled this is everything that you need for one bed i've laid it out to make it really easy for me to drill together the only thing i really need to do at this point is find the center point so that i can place this board in the correct location and then lining up the galvanized metal to fit really well and other than that it's just drilling it together obviously drilling on the ground is not the most ergonomic but i don't really have a better place to do it right now and actually doing on the ground makes it easier to make the boards fit nicely together because some boards are slightly warped or they don't sit perfect you can put pressure on the wood which makes it sit flat and then it's much easier to get the wood to line up really nicely and build a very straight box once you've constructed your two side pieces it's now time to put on the galvanized roofing panel now these beds were built according to the size of this roofing panel actually which is 12 foot long by 26 inches tall now i did this to make it easier to install the roofing panel the 12 foot panels that go on the long sides don't need any cuts it's only on the left and right sides that will need to be cut to the three foot length so at the time of purchase these 12 foot sections cost 21.55 each and i just checked home depot prices have gone up further and i can't even find these exact panels so be sure to check lowe's or your other local hardware stores the lowe's ones unfortunately are 2.16 inches tall and if that's the case that you can only find that you will need to adjust those 10 vertical pieces by half a foot approximately the roofing tin is held in place by one inch roofing screws they're zinc coated so they will not rust now you can of course buy cheaper screws if you like i wanted to buy the nice ones so once you've constructed all four pieces you just need to put them together using three inch construction screws so if you're doing this by yourself it makes it easier if you can lean it up against a wall and kind of use your legs and hands to brace it all together and make sure that as you screw it together things are lining up really nicely so that it looks good once constructed even these 12 foot long boxes are not that heavy to move if you use a dolly on one end a person holds the box on the other end you put the dolly and you can roll it wherever you want how did i start this get the correct angle in the beginning so that i could lay these out all in parallel and make it look nice when you're looking out from the house and all that well the first thing that my wife and i did was just walk around look at the space get a feel for it we started just looking at the house and where we might want to have the beds lined up with maybe we have it line up with the side of the house to make it look like it's all in line we start we put out some flags on the ground to mark out where potential beds could be highly recommend doing that so you can get some sort of visual the final thing we did is i just built two of those boxes we put them out here put them where we thought we wanted them and then got the feel for that looked at it from different angles and then said yeah this looks good and let's continue with that um so what i did is i tried to copy the angle of the house um and it's which is nice because the angle of the house is perpendicular to the slopes water coming down will get captured i'll eventually dig a swale in front i'm gonna do some other water management techniques around here putting in mulch and all that so the one tricky part which i eventually kind of just did it by eye was trying to make these beds at the same angle as the house i took a piece of string line you could use chalk line and just stretch that out in parallel with the line of the house i wanted to copy and then put a flag here i did it add another one put a flag and that gave me a rough estimate of where i wanted to be but honestly it was easier just to put the two beds out here look at it from all these different angles to make sure it looked good and then you know finally said okay this is where we want it so the first bed that you put in if you're in a similar situation that's going to be the corner piece everything will be based upon that so getting that one in the right angle set up is really important because off of that one i'm just taking measurements to make sure it's in parallel just like i'm about to show you okay guys so now it's time to show you how to place this in the ground now if you're on a flat slope or concrete or some rocks or wood chips a flat area you're not going to have to do all this extra work that i'm doing but here's some tips on what i did to deal with the slope and hopefully that will help you and of course i saved the worst box to show you guys to show you how i can overcome this so the first thing i need to do is make sure that these two beds are parallel going this way the easiest way to do that is to just measure this edge to this edge so i want the pathway to be four foot in distance so i just need to move this bed out to four feet on this side and that side and then they'll be parallel okay so now i just want to visually check that this is actually in line it's not too far left or right of the other bed and that the angle looks correct and you can even go look from either a higher up distance or a further away distance and to make sure everything looks really nice the next step after getting everything in line exactly how you want it is to start digging the trench that is going to help to balance this out okay so for the next part of the process you are going to need a level and then just take a look at it by eye you're going to be able to tell which side is way higher than the other if it's just you know barely off then you know get the level in there so you can really see what you need to start doing i can tell that this side is way higher you also might notice that this is offset a little bit from that bed well that's because when i dig in here the bed is going to shift over to go in that little trench and then it will line up with that bed so i started using a little trenching shovel four inch trenching shuffle to try to dig these and there's lots of rocks and clay so it's pretty hard this has been my most valuable tool the pickaxe so i'm going to dig this first one out and then i'll show you what i do to get the outsides and the other edge so that when you put it in the trench it all lines up and it works okay so i've dug out what i think the depth of the trench will approximately need to be before i can test it though i need to dig this angle and going this way right now i'm lined up with this bed right here so i want to make sure my trench is going to be right there and i'm going to have to push this forward a little bit so i just took my shovel and kind of marked the spot but i also dug this first trench to roughly the spot it needs to be where i'm gonna put the next trench so i'm just gonna push it straight forward a few inches so that i can get my pickaxe in there so using these more broad tools like the shovel and the pickaxe is allowing me to have some wiggle room in there there's four inches of play that i can move back and forth to get it really perfectly aligned but you still need to make sure that it's close so i know that this corner needs to be sunk down the lowest that corner doesn't really need to go down at all so as i'm digging towards this corner i'm digging less and less deep so this next side is gonna be a little bit trickier because i'm gonna i need to push it this way a little bit so that i can make the trench in the right position i will try to line it up with the other trench but to really make sure i'm gonna measure again to the other bed on both sides to make sure i'm still on that parallel line that i want that measurement that i take from this other bed is going to be more like 46 inches and not 48 something around that as long as the measurement on each side is the same we will be in that same parallel line and then the final thing i'm going to need to do is put a block on that corner and as i've gotten down deeper into the yard here where it's steeper i've noticed that that's pretty much the only way that i can get it perfectly balanced cool so that's perfectly level with this one two by four piece and then the other thing that i'll do is just make sure that there is dirt uh underneath this so that will also help to support the structure over time now i'm just gonna check the level of everything one last time and we should be good to go all right everybody so these are my raised beds thank you so much for watching on a future video i will show you how i built my in-ground beds and that whole process which is a bit different thank you to hoselink for sponsoring go check out their website and their discount code on their great products and if there's any questions or comments or anything let me know down below i'll try to get to those and help you if you're trying to build your own raised beds and just get out there grow your own food guys this is like the most important thing you could do for your life i think as far as the material world goes is to grow your own food all right everybody hope you have a wonderful day in your farm or garden and i'll see you in the next nature's always right video

Channel: Nature's Always Right

Views: 182,213

Keywords: how to build garden boxes, how to build raised garden beds, how to build raised garden boxes, raised bed gardening, how to build a vegetable raised bed, corrugated metal planter box, raised bed garden construction, birdies raised garden bed, vego garden raised beds, raised garden beds designs, raised garden bed ideas, raised garden beds, epic gardening, metal raised garden beds, diy raised garden beds, raised garden bed, raised bed garden, hugelkultur raised beds

Id: oY5ZI8lETSI

Length: 27min 53sec (1673 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021