Small House Raised Garden Beds - Free to Frugal

There are so many ways to make raised garden beds today,from free to frugal, that it is making my head spin. And today, I just readabout another one; using heat treated pallet wood (look for the HT stamp on thewood) to build them. Wow, so much amazing creativity out there. If you follow my blog, you know that we had some SERIOUS flooding here on our land in SW Michigan (see link below). I lost a lotof my landscaping due to plants sitting under water for months at a time. However,the raised bed areas almost all survived! As a result, I’m now a big fan ofraised beds for this and for all the other reasons (the soil heats up quickerand stays drier, less bending so easier to plant and harvest and so on.) And, your beds really do not have to be as deeply raised as you might thinkin order for them to be effective.Here’s that approach I am using for raised beds at the SmallHouse Under a Big Sky:STONES: Some of my beds are raised using medium sized stone Ihave collected from farmers’ fields and along the roadsides over the years. Theyhave been filled with soil and bark chips to raise them slightly. This is arustic cottage garden look that I enjoy.CEDAR: One spring that we were feeling flush, we boughtthese cedar boards and build two large beds for newly planted strawberriesplants. Through the years they have been “nursery beds” for small plants thatneed to grow more before being transplanted into their permanent places. These cedaredged beds are now being used for butterfly bushes and various perennials. RAILROAD TIES: These repurposed railroad ties were her on ourproperty when we moved here. They are very old and most likely no longer carryany creosote but that is something you should watch out for is you desire touse them for food plants. When the White Oak Gallery was open, they held a colorfulcutting garden and now are planted with more butterfly bushes, forsythia plantsI have created from cuttings and flowering perennials. LOGS: last fall I needed to get some temporary beds quickly setup quickly in the fenced in vegetable garden. Ideally I would have liked for myhusband to have built me some permanent cedar beds but there wasn’t time. So I went into the woods and to the firewoodpile and selected some long logs that had not yet been cut down to fireplacesize. I added my homemade compost and leaves and tada….I had some temporary raisedbeds. I’ll be moving these beds around as I recreate the vegetable garden designand rebuild the chicken house, so temporary was a good idea after all. If you want to see a great curated version of raised bedsfrom pallets by fellow gardener Barb Rosen, go to this Hometalk link for more great ideas http://www.hometalk.com/b/742486/raised-beds-are-the-rage