Friday 10/7/2016 - What's Up?

Checking out a local art/craft show on Saturday morning before the rains hit. It's usually a very good show with high end vendors...more artsy than craftsy. Then back to building the raised garden beds. Overbuilding, as usual with lined PT 2 x 12's and hardware cloth below grade to keep moles/voles out. Saturday edit: Lots of rain. More than half the vendors at the art show cancelled out and the few remaining were mostly locals.
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So this is why people have raised beds, out here in the West they're just another way to dry things out faster which ain't good. I can see that out there they're just another way to dry things out faster which looks like a real good deal :thumb:. :rofl:
 
....Ted, how deep do you go with, that screen ( you call hardware cloth) i gather.

Then , why the ice shield on the sides of the pt wood?

Curious because Linda said i gotta get my backside in gear and make raised beds next year. I told her i would at our final resting place, not rented place, so gathering info.

What did you put in the very bottom? Anything?

Btw my eventual version of raised is going to be high enough not to bend.

Rob,
The depth of the screen depends on your critters. Mine are moles/voles. The moles tunnel around looking for worms and grubs and then the voles use the mole tunnels to go after plant roots. They usually concentrate in the top layer of soil. For the first couple of boxes I cut the 24" x 25' roll of galvanized screen into two 12" wide strips, then bent them 90 degrees length-ways.... 1" at the top to create a flange to staple to the underside of the frame and then 7" down to create an "L" shape, bent to the outside to stop them from digging deeper. This latest box I got cheap and cut the wire into 6" strips and omitted the lower bend.
I used ice and water shield on the first couple of boxes as a barrier between the pressure treated wood and the container soil to lessen any possibility of PT chemicals leaching into the planting mix and getting into my veggies. The new pressure treating compounds don't contain any arsenic and are supposed to be OK, but there are still recommendations to keep root vegetables at least 12" away from the wood. With a barrier you don't have to worry. I have since switched to a heavy duty pond liner stapled on with stainless steel staples. The reason for switching is that the fine print on the ice and water shield says it is designed to be covered up and the outer plastic starts to degrade after a few months if exposed. I'll keep an eye it and cover it with pond liner if it starts to go bad.

There's nothing on the bottom of the boxes. I use a small Mantis rototiller on the beds and it would tear anything on the bottom up.
 
Ted, how deep do you go with, that screen ( you call hardware cloth) i gather.

Then , why the ice shield on the sides of the pt wood?

Curious because Linda said i gotta get my backside in gear and make raised beds next year. I told her i would at our final resting place, not rented place, so gathering info.

What did you put in the very bottom? Anything?

Btw my eventual version of raised is going to be high enough not to bend.

I too, had these same questions and Ted's comments explain a lot. We had a very small but quite successful container gardening experiment this summer and I'm thinking of taking it up to one 4'x8' raised bed next year. There's a sunny spot generally between the house and the barn where we'd be passing by a lot and it would get the attention it needs.

Just a thought Rob, standing height beds will take a lot of soil, but if there was a steep bank that needed terracing you could maybe do something creative there.
 
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