Quick and Easy Raised Bed Planters

Why, when we have 60 acres, are we building raised bed planters? Glad you asked!

At first glance, raised beds can look like large containers. But raised beds do not have bottoms like a planter or box would – they are built directly on top of the ground. Some raised beds don’t have walls at all, and are simply piles of soil mounded on top of the existing soil!~HGTV

As far as gardening goes, I’d bill myself as a novice at best. A willing-to-learn-novice. I’ve puttered, had success’s and failures while discovering I really like gardening!Once I dug into it (pun intended) a plethora of methods popped up. Square Foot, Back to Eden, Permaculture, Lasagna, good old fashioned row crops and more. My head was spinning. Which to choose? What to do?

Mr. Bluejeans and I decided to start with raised beds. I just couldn’t wait to get to planting, especially after my free plants out of the dumpster forage!

I just had to get those babies in the dirt. But I didn’t want to commit a section of the farm to planting, only to decide as we build, that was a bad place to plant. So we are going with raised bed planters. Of course we have all the furries that enjoy munching on the new smorgasbord I just planted so we built a 40×40 fenced area.

With this much space I decided to use our fenced spot as an experimental garden area. The thought is I can create small test areas and try Back to Eden, Lasagna, row cropping or whatever method I please, along with new test plants that I’ve never grown, to see if they do indeed flourish in our area.

I’m really excited to have this garden area to play with. Looking to the future, I’d love to get into the lesser known herbs and veggies in order to eventually sell them at the Farmers Market. This test area can help me decide what works and what doesn’t.

Ever the helpful handyman, Mr. Bluejeans built our planters with me as his ever faithful sidekick. In all, I believe we will have 10 to 15 raised beds once we are finished. Stand alone pots, pallets standing on their ends as strawberry planters (future post) dedicated Back to Eden, Lasagna, trellising, a shaded area and plenty of methods I haven’t even heard of yet will find their way to our garden area.

These raised beds were quick and easy to build using only cedar planks, 2×2’s and drywall screws. Click here for the Raised Bed Instruction Download  PDF. Or if it’s easier, check out the video to see how it all came together. Anyway you look at it, this is a simple project that pays off BIG later! Now…aren’t you glad you asked?

What’s your favorite planting method?