When to build a new raised garden

[Crabbergirl]

Nice job Errol! Looks great! I love gardening this time of year.

 

[bankysmith]

Does anyone have any useful youtube links on how to build your own raised beds for gardening? My backyard is all grass, and I would have to turn over a section of soil in order to start my garden. I would prefer to just build a gardening bed, and place it over my grass. I don't care if the grass dies underneath, but I would like nice looking raised beds. If anyone could post some how to videos, I would really appreciate it.

 

[Randy]

I don't have raised beds now, but I did have at our last house. I did what you are proposing and it worked out well. That was quite a few years back now and I think I hauled in topsoil to fill the raised beds.

 

[mr_yan]

Bankysmith, are you looking for a step by step guide to building the box and or filling it? I think that The All New Square Foot Gardening book walks you through it rather well. I've built 4 wooden raised beds on the lawn in my backyard and one wooden raised bed on a concrete slab in my backyard but I didn't follow any instructions.

I used a mix of shredded fall leafs, garden / yard scraps, peat moss, and local top soil. I also mixed in the entire contents of my compost pile when making these. There was no real plan to how I mixed it but I had read about lasagna layers before I made the beds.

If you add a lot of yard scraps at once to a lasagna bed the composting action will heat up the material and kill off the plants. You'll want to wait a few weeks between building a lasagna bed and planting it.

I don't like weed block fabric across the bottom of my beds but many people do like these. I find that adding a thick layer of newspapers - call it a full section of a paper opened up - over the lawn before adding the grow medium kills off any grass and unwanted plants from growing up and through the raised bed.