Making our 3rd raised bed garden. What we have learned. Tips for your raised bed.

hello and welcome to country living with the wades i'm phillip wade and today i'm going to tell you about our third raised bed uh what we've learned from it and so forth now if you like these videos please like and subscribe it really helps us out helps us keep these videos going so let's get started this is raised bread number three and what have we learned there was a lot to it so i went ahead and typed it up right quick so i could just sort of read it now having made three raised beds uh and experimented with with some different vegetables it's time uh for us to share what we've learned uh raised bed gardens have many advantages um we did not realize how many advantages there were to a raised bed until we made our first one and then we were totally amazed so we made our first one and last uh february of last year we made number two in september of last year and now this is number three and this is uh middle of march well actually today i think is the 22nd or 23rd of march so in one year's time in 12 months basically 13 months we've made three raised beds and we are thoroughly enjoying it and with each raised bed we've made some improvements so here we go the first thing that we want to talk about is uh construction the raised bed needs to be uh able to receive a full sun uh from the morning into evening if possible now for this one i had some crepe myrtles over here on this side one great big one and it was causing the problem so i cut it off as close as i could get it to the ground the problem with crepe myrtles is you can't get rid of them you can pull it up by the roots and they're still little pieces of the roots they see sunlight they'll go ahead and just start growing new crepe myrtles the more level the ground is the better now this was the most level spot that i could find that was in the area where we wanted to make the raised bed the more level it is the less work that's needed to lay the the first layer now once you get your first layer laid that's where the real labor is the rest is just stagger stacking uh the blocks on top it's best to align the raised bed east and west then all the plants will get the best use of the sunlight now this one is east and west the first ones one and two they were north and south and so what happened is if i had a taller plants in in the middle the plants on the north end didn't get as much sun and also if i had a netting over like i have on this one the accumulation of the netting looking at it at a long angle really reduce the sunlight that it would get on the north side number two plan the dimensions we make ours three concrete blocks wide and 12 concrete blocks long so it's 48 inches across in the middle on the inside and 12 blocks along on the length you can make it shorter or longer if you want to but you don't want to make it any wider than 48 inches if you make it wider than 48 inches it's difficult to reach in the middle have your construction materials ready before you dig knowing the dimensions plan out the cost put stakes in the corners i did that i put a stake on each corner and i checked it to make sure it was lined up the way i wanted to line it up i looked at where i had the stakes and i said yes this is the best place so that's where i plan to do it currently concrete blocks cost about two dollars each uh do not use cinder blocks if you can even find them they don't really exist anymore concrete blocks are astm c90 load bearing uh they're made with cement and sand no cinder and no ash is used in them uh making it three layers high and uh which is a 12 by three twelve three blocks wide twelve blocks long cost us about a hundred and eighty dollars uh in concrete block that's 30 per layer so we had 90 concrete blocks that we used on this one hoops these are the hoops if you want to use hoops and garden netting plan for it we used concrete in our block holes to hold the hoop pieces and you can see on each one of these i have a small base you'll see it better in the video i have a small base for the hoop itself and the hoop the base all it is is a piece of a one inch uh pvc schedule 40 that's cut off i don't know five or six inches long and i just pour the the concrete dry concrete mix it's already mixed with sand um cement and pea gravel and i just pour it in there dry i don't have to worry about trying to mix it ahead of time i put the little piece in for the for the base uh and then i just wet it with a water hose it'll harden up when as soon as it rains the first time it's all solid just like leaving a bag of concrete out somewhere it's going to get hard as as rock hard as concrete i used a concrete in the holes to hold the hoop base pieces it also strengthens the walls because this concrete goes all the way down through this section it ties this block to this block and to this block so you get that extra strength in there not that you really need it unless you're going to run into it with a lawnmower or something that's going to stay here um as an option if you don't want to use cement on the inside of these because you're thinking maybe two years down the road three years down the road you might move you might want to disassemble it and reassemble it somewhere else then look at using just nothing but just your dirt from your from your lawn from right from your your yard just put the dirt in there pack it down tight and put these in there uh maybe but then if you do i would make the base piece instead of making it five or six inches long i'd go ahead and make it about eight inches long to make sure it's got plenty of strength in there and support to be able to hold your hoops but then you could do that instead of concrete ours is going to be here forever as far as we're concerned so i don't have a problem at all going ahead and putting concrete inside there you don't need to cement your blocks together now remember there's a difference in cement and concrete cement is the glue that holds um the stuff together all right the stuff that you're holding together when you're using mortar mix is sand and that's all it is it's cement and sand and that's mortar mix and that's what's used to go between blocks and bricks when you're making a wall for example but if you're just pouring concrete usually it's going to have cement sand and some kind of gravel on the inside or p p p gravel which is what this is now on these i just use the ready mix type or the quikrete um it's a it's a pre-mix and 50-pound bags uh it i think they're about right now the current cost is about three dollars and 40 cents a bag some name brands that might be more expensive but the stuff i used was about three dollars and 40 cents a bag and that's what i've just poured in there just take it straight from the bag just pour it straight in the hole when i'm got my little base piece in there or whatever i just wet it down with the water hose once and forget it if you're in a location where your soil is real soft and you're afraid that the blocks might start to sink you're thinking okay maybe i need to put a a cap block or something like that on the bottom to make sure the blocks don't sink cap blocks are expensive the most uh cost-effective way that i know of to do that is go ahead and put your first layer of blocks down don't worry about the capstone underneath and then once you've got them in place and you've got them leveled come back and take this pre-mixed uh concrete and pour into each one of the holes about an inch and a half now what will happen is that will get hard it'll adhesive itself to the blocks and it'll give you a solid bottom all the way around that will not sink now that's a lot a lot less expensive because one bag at three dollars and forty cents a bag will do about one two three four it'll do about four or five uh blocks by by using one bag and that's uh about a third of the price of what it would cost for capstones i think that's pretty much it for the construction part let's go to the field materials on the film materials we found that it's hundreds of dollars cheaper to buy the fill in bulk if you can now our local nursery we have a couple of local nurseries here and they all sell uh the uh fill material in bulk now the one that we normally use um sells a bulk is uh by the tractor scoop a full scoop and and ours is just about a full yard which is a full yard would be 27 cubic feet so if you compare that to the half half foot or one foot bags that you buy at the big box stores to fill in it would be very very expensive i think when we did raise bed number two we showed just doing two blocks high that was about a 400 difference in cost by doing it in bulk versus buying the bags somebody's making a lot of money on the bags our nursery sells it uh the fill by the bucket and which is like i said a little bit less than the yard maybe it's 24 25 cubic feet uh and it's gone up this year from fifty dollars a bucket to sixty-five dollars a bucket but you know you look at the gas prices have gone from two dollars and fifty cents a gallon to four dollars a gallon you know in this this last year and a half so it's it's crazy and also with a bulk if you've just got regular wooden planks on the bottom of your uh trailer uh they can just put the scoops right on that you almost lose nothing going down the road from the nursery to back to your home place we get a sand top soil potting mix or compost from our nursery now sometimes they have a mushroom compost and we've tried that on bed number one and bed number two we used uh cow manure compost because that was all they had and that's what we put in this one so well this one i'm i'm assuming will grow just as well as the first one now things that we've uh we've learned uh we don't have moles here so we don't have to worry about something digging underneath and coming in we don't have to spray any kind of poisons in the bottom to kill the grass or anything like that now if you're in an area that has molds real bad you might want to look at putting some what they call rabbit wire it's got the quarter inch squares on the bottom just lay it on the bottom before you start to put your fill in and make sure that it covers as as well as possible um i've seen where some people were or so avid about it they want to make 100 sure so they they go ahead and they cut everything completely level on the dirt then they lay out their uh their wire mesh and then they start laying the blocks directly on top of that and i guarantee you that way there's absolutely no way something can dig underneath and get up into your into your garden with that information there i'll show you quickly how we put the how we built this one now when i built this one uh i took three hours to build all the block to prepare the dirt and put all the block in and land all the block up um and that was three hours of me i'm 71 years old now if i was 25 years old maybe it might have taken me two hours two hours and 15 minutes but i'm going to take my time do it you'll just keep going steady slow and steady there's no reason to rush on it it didn't have to be made in a day and i parked the trailer real close to it so i didn't have to go very far from the trailer to this and i did the same thing when i did the bulk material in there i had i just parked the trailer on the back side and i just shoveled it from one into the other and i just went a steady pace took my time i did some one day and i finished the rest of it the next day so three hours to build the base and then another hour and a half or so shoveling the fill in and it's pretty much ready to use well this is where raised bed number three is going and it's going east and west so it gets the southern sun facing it over the full length of it all the time step number two have all the base materials and stuff ready to begin [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] well i have less than three hours in it and the whole inspector's already checking everything out now you notice i didn't put any flat stones down or any other kind of base underneath the blocks uh and there's a reason for it this ground is very very hard it's very doubtful that the blocks will ever try to sink or anything but now if you're in a situation where you're worried about that possibly happen there's a cheaper method instead of using the flat stones underneath because they're really fairly expensive just take each hole and pour you about an inch and a half of powdered cement in each one and when it gets wet it'll harden and it'll make a solid bottom on the bottom all the way around and it's a lot cheaper than putting in the flat stones all right another 15 maybe at the most 20 minutes has passed i'm putting on the second layer now tlc is much easier on a raised bed than it is in a regular garden tlc covers everything from when you prepare the soil until you take the plants out [Music] [Music] do [Music] well it looks like we've got a major storm coming through lots of lightning they're saying there's a possibility of uh hail and tornado warnings or tornado watches so very quickly i'm going to cover the plants i just planted yesterday [Music] [Music] bye [Music] um [Music] now if you like these videos please like and subscribe it really helps us out helps us keep these videos going

Channel: Country Living With The Wades

Views: 123,023

Keywords: Making a raised bed, concrete block raised bed, soil blend, hoops, Home garden

Id: J8sx26RMJv4

Length: 16min 23sec (983 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 23 2022