Since it is such a nice warm spring day we decided to build a raised bed to put in two more blueberry plants and to plant all of the spring bulbs that Katy “had to” have from the local garden center (Love Jerry’s!).  This is a nice simple design for a quick raised bed, and very cheap to build

Materials:

• 8 red tone fir (I don’t know what else to call them i just know the red coloring is non-toxic) total cost $20
• 1/2 yard of dirt of choice (planting mix for me) total cost $10
• plants (yes I know that is kinda obvious)

For this one we went with making a nice square raised bed. The fir boards are 8 feet long and 3 inches high. The first thing that we will do is cut them in half to give us 16 boards that are 4 foot in length. Then we will interlace them at the corners to keep them together. This will create a nice 4×4 bed that is just over a foot tall. This is the perfect depth for bulbs and shallow rooted plants.  We are putting the box around a hole in the yard that a rotting stump has created.  I was getting tired of tripping in it.

When you interlace the corners of the boards like this it keeps them from coming apart.  The weight of the dirt in the box pushes outward causeing the corners to bind and prevents the box from coming apart.  The only thing you need to do is screw or nail the top layer of boards down and your box is not going to shift at all.  Even with out doing that the boards only come apart on top if a 6-year-old decides to balance on them.

And the bed is complete for around $30 in materials.  These are great beds to make if you want to get something planted quickly.  Total time to get the boards cut, and stacked and filled with dirt was only about 20 minutes.  Normally I can do it in 10 minutes.  Just stack all the boards together and measure to the middle than chain saw through the stack.  But the saw wouldn’t stay started.  I am thinking I need to tune it up a bit.  That will be a project for another day.  Time to mow and play in the sun some more