5 STEPS TO MAKING A GARDEN BED FOR YOUR HOME
Growing food at home is important. One of the main problems here in Arizona is the condition of our soil. Soil in Arizona is full of hard caliche and clay, making it difficult to successfully grow food. An easy solution is to build your own garden bed and fill the container with amazing soil and compost. Below I will outline the steps to build your own garden bed from wood.
MATERIALS NEEDED:
- Wood
- Hammer
- Nails
- Paint
- Soil
TEST TEST TEST
Step 1: Make Space for Your New Garden Bed
Determine where the garden bed will suit your growing needs. Ask yourself several questions; what do I want to grow, how much sun and shade do these plants need. Walk your property throughout the day to see how the sun and shade hits your perspective locations. Pick the location that fits your needs.
We chose to place some new beds here in the photo above. It does have some shade but in the afternoon the sun shifts and the gardens will get sun.
Step 2: Wood Planks
Measure the size of beds you want and go buy your supplies and wood. The depth of your bed can vary and depends on what you’d like to grow. Do you want leafy greens? twelve inches deep would work, or do you want tomatoes where the soils should be over eighteen inches deep. Buy wood from either the big box store or here at the farm, we prefer to support our local lumber yard. A great idea is to also search Craigslist and your local swip swaps to find cheap or free wood. Please note that red wood is amazing wood and is resistant to insects, mold and rotting.
Paint or oil stain your wood you’ve purchased for the garden bed. Painting or staining can help to protect your wood and give your garden some flair. We chose white as it’s a clean look.
Step 3: Screw the Wood Planks Together
Build your garden bed using whatever method you determine best. We prefer wood deck screws and a battery operated drill. It helps to have a friend hold wood to make sure screws are in tight. Make sure you screw in some wood posts to connect your layers of wood together. These posts help to provide stability, lines your wood right and allows the wood to stack properly as sometimes wood can be warped and not perfectly flat.
Materials needed for this step:
- Screw drivers
- Screws
- Measuring Tape
- Marker
- Leveler
Step 4: Add soil into garden bed
Once your garden bed is complete, add your soil and compost. We had leftover compost from the Arizona Worm Farm from another project we had, so we filled the beds with this great soil.
Step 5: Drip irrigation
Something about drip irrigation
