DIY Raised Garden Bed
Sharing a full how-to for making your own raised garden bed at home + stay tuned for a printable PDF how-to.
Hi friends! I hope you’re having a wonderful week. I wanted to re-share and update this post, since the Pilot made an amazing PDF with the plans he used to build this DIY raised garden bed. It would be perfect for a winter project and could be ready in time for spring planting!
Gardening has become one of my very favorite things and it’s been pretty amazing to walk outside and have everything I need to make a salad. 🙂
DIY Raised Garden Bed
For today’s post, I wanted to share the new garden the Pilot built! We used to have two orange trees on the side of our yard, but had them removed. They were filled with horrible stickers and produced sour oranges that no one ate. (Except for that one time Liv and our cousin Sara made orange juice for me.. and I had to drink it lol. I pretty much did a crazy sour-faced dance around the backyard before spitting it out.) Anyway, that part of the yard has been bare and we had big dreams to put something in its spot.
We also had irrigation from the trees, so I thought it would be cool to put a raised garden bed to complement our flat lettuce patch. I was browsing options online, and was getting ready to click, “Add to cart,” when the Pilot walked by and said, “What are you doing? I can totally make that.”
Wait, what???
So, the Pilot is insanely smart – I mean, he flies multiple aircraft NBD – but I had no clue he was handy like this, too. (He did build the famous bird condo, so I should have known.) I was pretty surprised when I saw him on the porch with slabs of wood and a circular saw, doing his thing. It was like my Chip and Jojo dream come true hahaha.
Before I knew it, we had a giant garden bed, complete with a mesh screen on two sides (we’re waiting until summer and the scorching hot sun is beating down to fully cover it), water protection, and attached to irrigation!
Isn’t it a beaut???
A bed this size would have easily been $300-400 online. He got the supplies at Lowe’s for $150. (The soil was another story. We ended up needing 30 cubic feet!)
Pin this for later!
Here’s just a small snapshot of what this thing looks like now: overflowing with incredible greens and produce!
Raised Garden Bed Free Printable Plan
I asked him if he’d put together a tutorial in case anyone wants to replicate this at home!
Here’s a printable PDF you can download and use: The Pilot’s Raised Garden Bed
We’ve grown onions, carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, red pepper, banana pepper, tomatoes, eggplant, and cucumber in our raised garden bed so far. Also, in our little lettuce patch we have a ton of Swiss chard, plus kale, arugula, spinach, and romaine growing like crazy. The guinea pigs might be the most stoked out of anyone in the family.
Do you have a home garden? Any tips or anything you’ve found useful?
xo
Gina
More changes we’ve made around the house:
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I can’t wait until his instructions come out!! I have been asking my husband to build a raised bed……but my method of “get some wood and figure it out” isn’t quite his style, lol.
Yes! I love this and thanks in advance to the Pilot! I’ve already planned on doing garden themed Easter baskets for the kids and my hubby said he’d build this so we can plant a garden!
I make soil using the square foot gardening method. A third each of peat, vermiculite, and compost. I want to build 2 beds 3×4 feet each. One I will line with pond liner to make it sub irrigated. It’s all an experiment when you are gardening. I need the beds deeper cause I am not getting younger. Can’t wait to see the plans.
We’ve always had a garden!! The greatest thing my hubby did was – use compost to mix in the soil once a year! He made a compost drum ( out of a huge plastic gallon drum ( not sure how many gallons) it was big- The garden flourished! Also rotating your plants every year is a great thing to do! For example don’t plant the tomatoes in the same place every year..maybe plant them where you had the cauliflower and swap spots☺️Great Job to you guys! It looks great!
Forgot to clarify about what to put in the conpost- All coffee grounds, veggie peelings- even toilet paper cardboard rolls & paper towel cardboard roll….a good mixture of wet & dry things but never any cooked food- only old raw fruit or veggies or peelings-. I’m not an expert – just sharing what we do!❤️☺️
Gorgeous! Since it’s currently blizzarding in Denver this is a funny post to me, but we enjoy parsley, sage, kale, and green onions from our raised beds virtually all year so anything is possible!
Be careful with romaine! It’s an invasive species and comes back the following year. We had romaine running out of the beds and into the surrounding yard the year after we planted, and it wasn’t even tasty, it was super bitter. Just stay on top of it!
My favorite thing to grow are peppers (all of the spicy ones!) and eggplants, mmm.
Hi! Just sharing a little tip, because we too have spent a LOT of money in the past buying soil to fill up these big garden beds. We’ve been using the “lasagna bed” method for a couple of years and it fills up the bed nicely, and it enriches the soil you do put over it! It’s great in drier regions because it helps with water management. It’s kinda like a giant compost heap under your soil, but there’s a few rules to follow… google it, it’s been working out great for us!
I hope you didn’t use chemically treated wood or a non organic stain for your bed. Using redwood or cedar, the bed should last 20 years without any treatment.
Love this raised bed inspo! Was there a link to the PDF guide on how to build your own? 🙂 Might be a good winter project before Spring!
My son made me raised garden beds a few years ago as a Mother’s Day gift. I have two L-shaped beds about 11″ high (high enough for veggies)–so much easier to work than an in-ground garden and way fewer weeds! The fun part was filling them with soil–4 cubic yards of it, which Google tells me weighs about 2200 lbs/cubic yard. It took me 5 hours, one-wheelbarrow full of soil at a time. It was a good workout!