DIY Raised Garden Bed

This corrugated iron raised garden bed is a diy project made from mostly recycled materials. We set this up to grow vegetables and herbs. It is waist high, about 2.5m * 1.25m.

This first picture shows the internal frame. We sourced pine and corrugated iron from our local building recyclers. The iron is bolted onto the 2*4 with roofing screws. The H in the middle supports the tin under the weight of soil. I used 4 inch screws through the tin into this.

Here is where the work is at. There is a cubic metre of crushed concrete, followed by a cubic metre of soil/compost. Both were sourced from the Armidale Transfer Centre (dump). Their front end loader dropped a bucket into our poor little ute to struggle home with. At $12 a load, it is fantastic value and the soil is as good a quality as you would buy from nurseries for much more.

How did we get it from the ute to the bed? Shovels of course and a few breaks for water. I am not used to real work.

Here is some vegetable garden shade cloth. Trying to cut down the harshness of the summer sun. Also provides a framework for bird/moth/cat netting.

Finally the planting. We watered well, then dug some holes for the seedlings, a sprinkle of blood and bone to get them started, and some sugar cane mulch to keep the moisture in. Garden bird netting in place too.

We got seasonal planting advice from Gardenate. We planted broccoli, silverbeet, lettece, parsley, coriander. These are all due May/June. We plan to continue to harvest and replace vegetables and try to get the most out of this space.

UPDATE 27th Feb - We found the shade cloth was not working for the high summer sun. Pictured is our update. Milder winter sun should get in but the hot, seedling burning sun will be cut down now.

UPDATE 20th March - one month in and here ar the results. The spinach is coming along beautifully. We lost some seedlings as we were fixing the shade cloth. We are going to harvest some lettece soon and put in the next crop to keep things turning over.