Building More Cedar Raised Garden Beds

Building more raised garden beds was supposed to be a winter project, but better late than never, right? We have a little less than 1/4 acre fenced in for a kitchen garden, which includes about 24 raised beds and 2 small greenhouses. We have several garden beds that don’t have hard sides. They are just mounds of good soil that are kept mulched for growing. However, the clover and grass constantly creep in on all sides…it’s a losing battle for us. So, these garden beds are getting redone with cedar sides. All the cedar is from our woods.

Here are some pictures with descriptions of how we make our raised garden beds from scratch.

I make some of the corner posts using a Haddon Lumbermaker jig attached to the chainsaw bar.
The chainsaw and jig slide along a 2×4 as it cuts giving a nice straight edge. Rotate the log 90 degrees and repeat.
I used an Alaskan Chainsaw Mill to make the 1.5 inch thick boards. I’ve done several posts about chainsaw milling on this blog if you want to search.
The cut posts are braced so that they are vertical while the boards are attached. The posts are not buried, but just set on top of level, tamped ground. All 4 corners are braced this way. The posts are cut a little long and trimmed off to be flush with the top boards at the end.
If multiple boards are needed to get the desired height of a side, then the top most board is installed first to create a horizontal plane for the top of the bed. The ground is sloping, so each post and board is custom cut to fit. These 2 raised measure 17 feet long by 3 ½ feet wide each.
Galvinized ½ inch hardware cloth is stapled to the bottom of the beds to keep out moles/voles.
Old cardboard is placed on top of the hardware cloth.
Old mushroom logs that are done fruiting are added on top of the cardboard.
The finished beds are filled with good soil. We’ll work in some compost and add lots of mulch on top to retain moisture and suppress weeds. Hopefully we’ll grow many years of good veggies and maybe some fruit as well.

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