The market offers a large number of materials that allow you to create raised beds with your own hands in the country. Various vegetable crops are grown annually using this method, obtaining abundant harvests. For example, the advantages of high pallet fences are convenience and order. Plastic beds also have certain advantages. At the same time, tall structures take up a lot of space, which is considered their disadvantage.
Beautiful tall vegetable gardens
Features of the beds
The availability of fertile land in sufficient quantities is suitable for creating greenhouse structures. It is better to arrange a tall garden with your own hands in this way according to the requirements:
- Choosing the right place for the garden bed.
- Determining the size of the plot.
- Making a frame from scrap materials.
- Filling the fence with fertile soil mixture.
- Availability of protective coating for the structure.
- Periodic harvesting.
Option from the board
Beautiful fences are suitable for early sowing of various varieties and types of plants. They have several advantages:
- any well-lit places on a summer cottage are suitable, including areas with rocky or clayey soil types;
- heating of the contents of the box occurs intensively in the spring; convenient watering;
- protection from bad weather and ensuring the safety of mulch;
- the presence of a drainage layer eliminates moisture stagnation;
- digging and weeding large areas is no longer required;
- use sand or crushed stone to fill paths between rows.
Wooden box
It is recommended to create raised beds at the dacha with your own hands in order to solve a number of problems associated with the slow development of vegetable crops. Fences create individual conditions for growing seedlings when choosing the most suitable soil mixture. It is important to ensure constant watering of the beds to prevent rapid evaporation of moisture.
Advice from experienced gardeners
Tall brick structures for personal plots have their own characteristics of care. Experienced gardeners offer several useful recommendations that will significantly simplify work on such structures and help increase plant growth and productivity.
Gardener care tips:
- The big advantage of raised beds is the soft, almost ideal soil. It is strictly forbidden to step on it or walk on it. To make it convenient to care for plants, the width of the fence structure should not exceed 120 cm.
- To prevent the soil from drying out and maintaining an optimal level of moisture, it is recommended to mulch the beds with planted plants. Grass, straw, wood chips or leaves are suitable for this.
- For ease of watering, you should consider an automatic watering system before filling the fence with soil. This can greatly facilitate plant care and maintain soil moisture at an optimal level.
- Care should also be taken to protect plants from pests and rodents. Therefore, it is imperative to use a construction metal lattice (preferably with frequent spacing) as the basis for the fencing design.
- To protect plants from weeds, a barrier is provided at the bottom of the base. For this purpose, you can use old cardboard, thick paper in several layers, and unnecessary floor mats.
- To increase the yield of vegetable and fruit crops, one should not forget about regularly fertilizing the soil with compost, as well as systematically loosening the soil as necessary.
- At the end of the growing season, it is recommended to cover the soil of the bed with mulch. This will help protect it from freezing and compaction in winter. For this purpose, dry straw, grass, leaves, and a mixture of organic waste from the garden are used. To protect fertile soil from low temperatures, garden film is also used.
Following the recommendations can significantly simplify plant care, and systematic prevention of fenced and high brick beds will improve plant growth, health and fruiting.
Fencing materials
When making the box, logs, bricks, corrugated sheets or stone are used. If you build it from pallets with your own hands, red or cedar wood, this will increase the service life of the structure. The bottom inside is usually covered with a plastic or metal protective mesh to protect against rodents.
Setting up raised beds does not require the use of expensive equipment. For example, having made a box from plastic panels with your own hands, it is better to stretch a polyethylene film over it. Arcs made of metal or PVC are pre-installed. The greenhouse must have dimensions corresponding to the dimensions of the bed made of brick, corrugated board, wood, blocks or stone. This will protect the seedlings from frost and extend the harvest period.
When is the best time to do it and what to plant?
Fall or late summer are better times to create your own raised beds. If you start working in the spring, during this period the impact of emerging processes on the development of seedlings is very weak and imperceptible.
It is better to fill fences created in spring a month before planting seedlings.
Such vegetable gardens will decorate the yard
To fill raised beds at the dacha with your own hands, photos of which are presented below, the autumn period is most suitable.
Precisely when the development of internal processes in the earth continues. The layers in the box that have rotted over the summer provide the plant root system with the optimal amount of useful elements.
Plant rotation
Seedlings are usually planted immediately after the construction of structures. After harvesting ripe vegetable crops, they begin to alternate them annually with healthy herbs, for example, parsley, dill. This allows for abundant harvests every year.
Raised bed for strawberries
When preparing raised beds for strawberries with your own hands, it is recommended to take into account the main feature of this crop. It is associated with the location of the root system closer to the soil surface. Strawberry roots grow directly on the ground, so the fertile layer should not be too thick.
Great garden option for strawberries
The internal decomposition process will prevent strawberries from freezing during severe frosts. This is possible if the raised beds for strawberries are covered with snow or special material in winter. When planting plants in a warm bed, it is convenient to grow them in it due to the least evaporation of moisture.
Reasons for creating borders
Decorative borders can become part of the overall garden design. Combining different materials and colors will help create a bright composition and zone the area.
Reasons for creating a border:
- Simplifies maintenance (weeding, fertilizing), limits the area of weed growth.
- Preserves the fertile layer of the soil and reduces its weathering.
- Provides rational watering. Water goes directly to the roots of plants, rather than spreading to the sides.
- Blocks the path of pests to the beds. When the fence is buried in the ground, a kind of barrier is created against the penetration of pests from neighboring plants.
Material on the topic: all about pests.
- Restrains planting and proliferation of crops throughout the garden.
Bed borders complement the landscape design of the site and will help contain the spread of plants beyond the border - Strengthens loose soil, which is especially important on sandy soils.
- Promotes early harvest. Thanks to the sides, you can create a thermal bed by filling the space with organic matter. In such beds, the soil temperature is higher, and the crop ripens much faster.
The space between plantings remains clean, so the garden looks well-groomed.
In this video you will learn how to properly build a fence for a garden bed:
High bed for cucumbers and tomatoes
A bed for cucumbers or tomatoes is built according to a principle reminiscent of the method of arranging a fence for growing strawberries. The only difference is the need to install supports with crossbars along the edges to ensure crop support. Each cucumber vine, tied with a wire stretched between the posts, produces a bountiful harvest.
The most suitable place in the country is often equipped with several boxes. When doing them on the lawn, they leave room for working with a lawn mower. Be sure to provide a certain distance between the rows for the delivery of fertile soil, mulch or fertilizers in special wheelbarrows.
Boxes for cucumbers
Installation of tall vegetable gardens from boards
When choosing a method of arrangement, it is necessary to take into account the design of the landscape. For one site, beds made of plastic panels are suitable. For others, it is better to make frames from environmentally friendly products, for example, DSP. Unlike cement particle boards, planed boards require pre-treatment with impregnation. It can protect the tree from rotting.
Beautiful beds made of DSP are more convenient to install. To fix the fence, bars are usually used, nailing them vertically every 1.5-2 m. Sections of boards 20 cm longer than the selected height of the DSP structure are also suitable.
The installation of vertical supports made of timber is done with your own hands so that the structure for the bed becomes more reliable and convenient for digging. Each wooden element of the support is sharpened, which makes it easy to drive the fence into the ground.
Preparing boxes
Processing of wood material
The boards are cut taking into account the dimensions of the frame. Substances hazardous to human health should not penetrate the soil, so treated wooden elements are covered with film. Then the processing is carried out in stages. This requires:
- Cut the timber into 50 cm sections.
- Impregnate with a protective compound.
- Dry the material.
When installing a warm bed with your own hands, cover the wood on each side with an antiseptic. Waste oils are used as wood impregnation. The edges of wooden building materials must be processed from below, due to the presence of contact with the soil layer.
Site preparation
To build a box of boards, it is important to choose a place that is illuminated by the sun for five hours every day. Before you make a high bed, you need to mark its perimeter. After removing all debris, branches, small and large stones, you need to dig up perennial plants.
Various location options on the site
The earth is dug up at the same time as the fine grass to increase the permeability of the soil. If there is sufficiently dense soil, you can remove the turf taking into account the markings. The advantage of laying out a box of boards is that it does not require removing too much soil.
How to create a brick structure to protect plants from pests?
Very often, garden and vegetable crops suffer from the influence of moles. Therefore, summer residents try to arrange high-type beds with additional protection from such pests.
First you need to calculate the amount of material used. It is recommended to remove the turf along the perimeter of the bed, since the growing grass will cause clogging of the cultivated plantings.
Next, you need to mark the dimensions using stakes and construction cord for such purposes. After this, you need to level the area, especially in the area where the bricks will be placed.
After marking the contours of the beds, you should stick to the exposed cord and begin laying out the first brick row. It is not necessary to make the masonry perfectly level, since the structure may still sag a little as a result of rain.
After laying out the first row, you should check whether the fences are equal diagonally, and then look for defects and eliminate them. Then the bricks need to be removed, and a protective layer against moles must be laid on the bottom of the hole. Initially, it is necessary to place a mesh of galvanized material on the soil. On top you need to lay a layer of geotextile or black agrofibre.
If you want to build a higher structure, you need to lay 1-2 more rows of bricks. If you use hollow blocks, then you must fill the cells with the required amount of soil.
Installation of tall slate gardens
The slate sheets used to create the box are secured in different ways, for example, by digging. The stripes are 10 cm wider. The rules for constructing a fence using slate are similar to the method of installing a polycarbonate bed with your own hands.
There is no guarantee that the slate sheets used in the manufacture of the box will not move in the spring when the snow melts. Severely softened soil is an obstacle to the normal operation of the structure. Strengthening the structure will require a lot of time and great effort. If you build beds from pallets, this can be avoided.
Beautiful yard
Marking
Before marking the site, you should stock up on slate sheets, as well as:
- a piece of chalk or a pencil;
- tape measure;
- building level;
- rubber hammer;
- reinforcing bars or pegs.
How to choose garden border tape
Since using border strips you can create a wide variety of intricate flower beds, the choice of one model or another primarily depends on the purpose and how the structure is intended to be installed. The standard width of the strips is 10, 15, 20, 28 and 50 cm. If you plan to form stepped multi-tiered compositions, it is recommended to choose wider strips that penetrate better into the ground and hold the upper “floors”.
Among the manufacturers, German, Polish, Chinese and domestic companies prevail. Plastic garden border tape made in Poland and China has a texture that is too soft according to users. Because of this, the material does not hold the flowerbed well, and its boundaries gradually creep apart. Domestic analogues are famous for their general fragility and fragility. To ensure that the border for the beds lasts as long as possible and does not lose its aesthetic and strength qualities, it is recommended to choose German-made models with a reinforced edge.
