Framing Raised Beds

Pardon the weeds, please, but as you can see one of the biggest 2009 Meadowwood Garden improvement projects is well underway!  We are correcting a minor flaw by framing in our raised beds with wood, and adding a couple new beds while we are at it.

So why go to all this trouble?  Last year when we constructed the garden we decided to not frame the beds as a cost-cutting measure.  Midway through the growing season we bagan to notice some things we didn’t like such as the lack of uniform depth across the bed, the sloping that allowed soil to run off, and the easy time weeds (especially grasses) had crawling from the path into the beds.

During the winter downtime we explored many options for framing the beds.  Cedar is very expensive.  Pressure-treated wood is possibly toxic depending upon who you ask (we decided to err of the side of safety).  Concrete pavers end up being expensive.  In the end we decided to use plain old 2×6 framing lumber.

Our beds are 16 feet long by 4 feet wide.  16 foot long boards are expensive and very difficult to haul safely in a pickup truck.  We started looking at 8 foot lumber when we noticed there are pre-cut framing boards available that are just slightly shorter than 8 feet long, but were over 20% cheaper!  Since we were purchasing 36 boards the savings ended up being substantial, so that is the way we went.

We pre-built the frames on the floor of the workshop you see in the background and then carried the frames into the garden.  MUCH easier that way.  Now that everything is in place it is a matter of getting the weeds out and filling the frames in with soil.

What have we learned from this experience?

Build the frame THEN add the soil — Trust us on this one…

Size the bed to the lumber — If we could go back in time we’d have all of the beds be 8 feet long.  Using pre-cut (also known as dimensional) lumber is SO much easier than what we ended up doing to accommodate our lengthy beds.

Explore your options — Wood isn’t cheap.  If we hadn’t noticed the stack of pre-cut framing boards we would have overpaid by over 20%!  So what if our beds aren’t exactly 16 feet long now — the plants won’t notice!

Use untreated wood — We purchased untreated pine lumber that is used for building houses.  Yes, it will eventually rot and need to be replaced.  Some Internet research tells us it should last for at least 5 years and probably more.  We understand this and are willing to re-frame over time as necessary.

And don’t paint or stain it — The reason we are using untreated wood in our vegetable garden is to protect against the possibility of chemicals leeching into the soil and ending up in our food supply.  The trade-off is that the wood won’t last as long.  IF we were to paint or stain or otherwise try to weatherproof our frame we would introduce the possibility (we feel it would be a probability) of that paint or stain leeching into the soil over time…