Raised Bed Container Gardening

2 Materials
$150
30 Minutes
Easy

Hi, Liz here from Simple Decorating Tips, a DIY and decorating, (& gardening) blog.


I haven’t been able to put in a vegetable garden for a few years, and now at our new house, I really wanted to have one again. Then I stumbled across these raised bed planters, (see shopping link for them at the end) and they really looked like the perfect answer for a garden.

Raised bed container gardening has some pretty great advantages, but a few drawbacks too… like drying out too quickly.

The reason I was drawn to a raised bed container gardening idea is that they are raised up, away from the rabbits, chipmunks and squirrels, and oh so much easier to work in than bending over. The reason I was drawn to these planters is because not only is the planting space nice and large, but they have a reservoir inside the bottom that holds water creating a self-watering planter.

I stumbled across them online and they were on sale, so I grabbed 6 for my garden this year… and hopefully for many more years to come, but I’ll keep you posted, LOL.When spring finally came, it was time to set up the planters. They have a few pieces, packed inside, that needed to be assembled. I removed the pieces and flipped the planter over on a rug to work on.

( Here is a link for these exact containers, if you're interested in getting some for yourself)

Each leg fits in a slot on the bottom and gets held in place with a screw.

Here you can see inside the bottom of the planter without the bottom that pops over it:

I guess all the water sits in that area and gets wicked up into the soil as needed.

There is a drainage hole on the end with a rubber plug for draining the water every so often.


There is the planter with the bottom popped in:

It has those little holes that allow the water to transfer through.

This is the watering spout:

Inside it is the little float gauge.

On the bottom of the float guage is attached this gray foam to will pop up the float to show the level of water inside the container:

The last thing I needed to do in assembly of the raised bed containers is pop on these two side supports:

Then it was time for the soil. Since I’m growing veggies and herbs in these containers, I chose to go with an organic soil:

t took 4 bags of soil to fill each container. I also added some worm castings to each container for a natural fertilizer.So far, that was the easiest vegetable bed prep I’ve ever done!! Now onto the planting:

I put in all the seeds I selected, like several different types of herbs, a few different lettuces, radishes, beets, and green beans, (bush variety). I may have over planted the space a wee bit, but I can always thin out the plants too.

I also had some tomato plants and pepper plants that I planted:

Isn’t that bicycle whirly-gig kind of cute? I saw it when I was buying the tomato cages and figured it’d look whimsical by our little container farm.After everything was in, I started watering. The containers took a lot of water initially.

The tomatoes and peppers got some straw mulch to help keep them healthy. They can be prone to blight, and I think it can come from the dirt splattering up onto the leaves. Either way, the straw will help keep the soil moist for them too.

Pop over to my site to see the rest of the story and the progress!! Raised Bed Container Gardening at SimpleDecoratingTips.com!

Suggested materials:
  • Raised bed containers
  • Organic container soil
Liz at Simple Decorating Tips
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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