How To Build A Large Raised Garden Bed Out of Wood and Corrugated Steel!

so the raised garden bed that i'm going to be building today is really easy to make it's relatively inexpensive and it's pretty aesthetically pleasing and the materials i'm going to be using are going to be a combination of wood and metal now the metal is going to add a really nice look it's going to add to the aesthetics of the raised garden bed but that's not going to be the only reason why i'm going to be using it it's also going to be a little bit more cost effective now metal has gone up in price just like everything else but if you've been to your local lumber yard lately or your local home improvement store you'll notice that wood has skyrocketed astronomically so by using the metal it's going to save a little bit of money on this project so let's go ahead and start building it let's go so first i'm going to start out by making all of my cuts and i won't have to make a whole lot of them i'm going to have to make cuts for for instance the ends i'm going to be wanting this to be about four foot wide and i'm also going to make some supports for my long runs that are my long sides and i'm going to be making those at 19 inches the piece of metal is 26 inches wide and each two by four is three and a half inches wide so by cutting it to 19 inches it'll bring everything out to the exact right height all right so now i've got all of my cuts for my supports and my corners i've got my short runs or at the end of the box these are four foot sections and then of course i've got my eight foot boards now this isn't all of the wood and all the cuts i'm going to make for this particular project stick around to the end i'm going to show you a way to make all this a whole lot stronger and it's also going to make it look nicer as well so now i'm going to start taking my cuts i'm going to be using pocket holes to join all of this together now pocket holes are used a lot when building cabinets and some furniture and i'm going to be using it in this build because by using pocket holes it's just going to make everything look a whole lot cleaner you're not going to see a whole lot of screws or the holes that they create so it's just going to make for a much nicer look also pocket holes can create a very strong bond so it's actually a really good way of doing a lot of projects now this particular pocket hole jig is the kreg jig 720 pro and i've got to say if you don't have one of these and you do projects like this i would highly recommend picking this particular one up this is pretty much just plug and play put the wood in clamp it down and then drill your holes it really speeds up the process by a lot so now i've got my pocket holes drilled now i can actually start assembling this and by having those pocket holes in there it's just going to make everything a whole lot easier i don't have to worry about trying to toenail a screw in everything's going to be at the right depth and since i've already pre-placed all of my holes i know exactly where everything needs to get screwed in at so i'm just going to start out by building my lower portion of the frame first and i'm just going to go side by side all the way around in a square now after i've got my base all done now i'm going to start installing my post or my supports i'm just gonna go all the way around and put one at each corner and i'm also going to put one in the middle of each of my long runs just to make sure that there's plenty of support all the way around now that all of my supports are in place now i'm going to build the top portion of my frame and i'm just going to put this in just like i did on the bottom part of the framing where i'm just going to put it in piece by piece and connecting it to each one of my post all the way around all right so now i've got my top framing for my long runs done now i can tie my corners together and doing this is really going to tighten everything up and now i can run my top framing for my ends and that will about do it for the framing so now that i've got my framing done now i can actually start installing the metal i just have to measure from inside to inside to figure out how much metal i need to cut off now i'm just going to use a good pair of tin snips to cut this all down now there are other tools that can be used in order to make a much cleaner and straighter cut however this does not have to be a clean and completely straight cut just because it's going to be on the inside so therefore it's never going to be seen after the metal is cut down to size and put into place now i'm going to start inserting my screws i'm going to be using one inch metal to wood screws and these are made by tex and we actually use these screws on a normal basis when dealing with metal roofs they work really well they've got really good gripping power and then they also have what is basically a gasket right underneath of the head which provides a watertight seal now these screws are not exactly the cheapest things to buy so just use them as they are necessary some people think that they've just got to put a ton of screws in to hold this in place well you really don't we're not actually putting a metal roof on where we're having to make sure that it won't blow off in a hurricane we're filling this thing with dirt and the dirt is actually going to push the metal up against the wood so there's really no need to overdo it with the screws now i was talking at the beginning of the video about a step that can be taken that's 100 necessary to really strengthen all this up what i'm going to be doing is i'm going to be putting down a 1x4 board all the way around the top of the box what this is going to do with that board on its side is going to add a bunch of strength to help those walls from being able to bow out it's also going to protect fingers especially on little ones from the metal it's going to provide an area where you can sit and it's also going to make it just look a little bit better all right so now we've got the raised garden bed out in the yard where we want it to be and so now i'm going to show you how to fill this thing as economically as possible because if you just feel it full of dirt which is completely unnecessary you're going to spend a fortune i laugh when i hear people say it's cheaper than dirt because dirt is nowhere near cheap if you've bought it here recently and you've bought it in a large amount you know you're going to spend quite a bit of money especially on some fairly decent or good dirt that you're going to use in a garden so the first thing i do is i fill it full of logs and large sticks and branches and i just go around the yard or the outskirts of the yard and if you have woods on your property this is going to make this a whole lot easier because no doubt you're just going to go through the woods you're going to be able to find all kinds of limbs that are already down on the ground and all you got to do is just break them up i'm going to fill this bed up fairly high using these now not only are these large limbs and stumps and all the twigs going to take up a bunch of space that's going to save us money but they're also going to break down over time and as they break down they're just going to turn into dirt and not just regular dirt they're going to turn into dirt that is full of nutrients then if you have any kind of lawn waste or leaves then that's when i'm going to come in with that layer and put it on top of all of these larger limbs and stumps this is also going to break down very fast and it's going to help and feed the garden as well not to mention it's a great way of getting rid of some of your lawn waste then after that i'm going to come in with a nice layer of soil on top now don't just go to the store and buy the cheapest topsoil that they sell a lot of that soil is going to be dead dirt it's not going to have any nutrients in it and it's going to take quite a bit of time to amend it make sure that you're buying a nice topsoil or even a garden soil to put into your beds then after i've got a nice layer of that topsoil now i'm going to come in top with some homemade compost and as i'm introducing the compost to the top soil i just want to make sure that i'm getting it all mixed together that's going to ensure that i'm going to have a really nutrient-rich soil which is really going to help promote plant growth now if you don't have any compost i would first of all encourage you to start making your own compost but you can also use black cow that you can buy from the store mix that in with your topsoil and that's going to really help with adding all that nutrients to the soil that you need to help these plants grow and we couldn't be happier with the way that this turned out we really like the look of it we like the look of the metal with the wood we also know that we won't have to worry about this thing for a very long time knowing how it was built we don't need to worry about it moving or any kind of bowing with it being higher off the ground it's just going to make it easier to work on and overall it was an easy and relatively inexpensive option now that being said if you're looking for a really inexpensive option check out this video right over here in this video i show how i built some raised garden beds out of some of the least expensive materials i could find but it's still very sturdy so i hope this video was helpful maybe gave you some ideas for what you would like to do with your raised garden beds if it was please let me know by giving the video a thumbs up and of course if you have any questions at all you can leave those down in the comments down below and i'll catch you all in the next one

Channel: How To Home

Views: 214,372

Keywords: How to build a raised garden bed, how to build a raised garden bed cheap, How to fill a raised garden bed, How to make a raised garden bed, how to build a raised vegetable garden, Raised Garden bed, How to build a large raised garden bed

Id: zYzLOE-E-xw

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2022