Posted by maco in Growing Stuff on 2013-04-22 22:28:39 UTC and edited at 2013-04-22 22:29:33 UTC
PermalinkI think it would be nice to have raised beds tall enough to not need to bend over constantly. For building them, I'm thinking about cinder blocks, since they're pretty cheap. Has anyone here done waist-high cinder block raised beds? Did you need to mortar the blocks together, or did you use something else to stabilize them, or did they just stay?
Alternatively, what have you used to make cheap raised beds nice and high up? I don't see a super huge benefit to raised beds that are only raised 8 inches off the ground!
7 comments
I have a feeling that the raised bed concept comes from the square foot gardening movement; they defined that plants only need 6 to 8 inches of depth and so that's where the consistent 1.2m by 1.2m by 0.3m comes from for most beds.
Depending where you're located, you could get some lightweight sleepers from a garden supply store, join them to form your raised bed and just keep making them until you're happy with the height. Stack them and then screw some supports internally (and maybe a few externally) to keep them in place.
I've a bad back (woo accident damage) and so far the 0.3m height hasn't been too bad. I'll have to see how I go once I'm working on more than the one bed though.
I built a raised bed using cinder blocks last year and it worked really well! I only stacked them two high, so 12'', but you could probably add more layers without much trouble. I didn't find that they needed to be mortared in at all; they stayed really well, and I'm using the same raised bed this year.
I had a thought, if the blocks have holes you could use stakes to hold them steady in the ground rather than mortar. That way you can put them anywhere and pull it apart if you need to change the location.
Home Depot's website has informed me that "elevated bed" is the correct name for raised-bed-that's-table-height, in case anyone's wondering.
I'd be worried about the cinder blocks collapsing outward if they're full of soil and not mortared/supported in some way, so I'd say you'd want to stabilise in some way. Also, it would be kinda expensive to fill a really high raised bed, wouldn't it? What are you planning on filling it with?
I believe the Square Foot Gardening book has some suggestions for getting the raised beds really raised. And a quick search on Pinterest came up with all kinds of really cool ways to vary the basic raised bed.
As a teenager I once built a bed out of unmortared bricks. It was about 2' high. Shockingly, it did not collapse outward. Since cinder block is heavier than bricks, I think it would do fine. However, the suggestion of aligning the cinder blocks with stakes is a good one.
If you wanted something a bit sturdier but that you could still take apart, filling the cinder Blocks themselves with soil might help make them heavier (and give you a little more planting room)
The cheapest raised bed I ever built was made of a combination of recycled pallets and cedar fencing. It was about 2.5' high. Shockingly, it neither rotted nor oozed soil.