I have used a raised vegetable bed for the last few years in my garden. This year I’ve decided to expand a little and create some more raised vegetable beds to plant some new and exciting plants in.

I currently have 1 large raised vegetable bed. It’s 3 X16 I think ~ or however long the boards were I was using. I decided to create one more of these, the same size. I will also be building a few 4×4 beds for some new “experiments”.

I have a lovely helper in my building projects. She is terrific at holding and counting out screws while I work, as well as posing when we are done.

Step 1 to building a raised vegetable bed.

Where to get the wood?

I got my wood from a demo my husband did of an old porch. Yep, I know it’s probably not the best thing to use for a vegetable garden, but we’re all still here. If you don’t have access to any previously used wood you can get some at a local lumber yard. Make sure you don’t get treated wood, as you don’t want the chemicals to leech into your soil and your plants.

You can also use plastic, in fact, you can get raised vegetable bed kits from many different places. These are nice because they are all precut and you just have to slide the corner pieces on and you’re done. If you have the cash I’d  go for those ~ save you time and they will last forever.

Step 2 to Make a Raised Vegetable Bed

Measure out the length of boards you want to use. Make sure you can reach the middle from both sides. This means usually not going more than 4 feet across. Cut all your pieces and lay them where they will need to be.  You will also need to cut 4 posts for the corners. The posts are what keep the bed together.  I used 4×4 posts for this part. I did a terrible job cutting them, but hey ~ it’s not a beauty contest.  I have read you can use a height of 6 inches for your bed, but I always use two 4×6s on top of each other. Since I use lasagna gardening the materials shrink substantially through the year, and the 12 inches we start with gives me plenty of planting material at the end of the season.

Step 3  Connect Your Raised Vegetable Bed

Connect the pieces. We used screws, but you can easily use nails as well.  We connected the end pieces first, since they were smaller and easier to handle. Once we had the ends all put together it was easier to position the longer boards so we could screw them together.

Step 4. Shore up the sides of your Raised vegetable bed

My boards had been laying around for a while and were pretty warped. I used a 2×4 cut to the length of the 2 boards to pull them together and strengthen the long sides.  I did this for my first one and his has held up quite nicely.

I did one on the inside and one on the outside only because one set of boards was VERY warped and doing it on the inside was the only way I could get them to go together. I generally put the support boards on the outside of the bed.

So there you have it, how to put together a raised vegetable bed. Here’s our final project, with a proud toddler in the middle.

Tags: how to make a raised bed, raised vegetable bed, raised vegetable garden, Vegetable garden