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DIY Raised Garden Bed
If you’re thinking about adding a raised bed to your garden, there’s no need to buy one that’s ready-made. Not only is it easy to make your own vinyl raised garden beds, but it’s also a lot cheaper than buying prefabricated units. Supplies are readily available and you only need a few tools. Read on to learn what you need to know to just do it yourself. Plus, we’ve created a free set of raised garden bed plans for you to download. Enjoy!
Make Your Own Raised Garden Bed
Building a raised garden bed is not only cost-effective, but it’s also simple. We prefer to use vinyl fencing that is stocked at most home improvement stores. The color is attractive and plays well with all the colors in the garden, it lasts several years without being expensive, and vinyl can be sawn, drilled, and filed with common tools found in many home shops.
You’ll be using vinyl fence rail and corner post stock, along with the number of post caps you’ll need for your project. We use 5” x 5” (13 cm x 13 cm) post stock. If you can obtain plain stock, without any fence rail socket cutouts, you will have more flexibility on how to use it.
Our garden beds are “double-deckers” - meaning that we use two fence rails stacked on top of each other to form the box sides. This means that the corner posts are cut at 17” (43 cm) tall. You can do singles, but we prefer doubles both to give more depth to the growing medium, more height to the box so we don’t have to bend down as much to tend the gardens, and to provide more height so if we place path materials, there is still enough height to have nice proportions to the boxes.
In the United States, the fence rails are commonly sold in 16’ (about 5 meters) lengths. This works out really well. We make our boxes 4’ (1.22 meters) wide, and then, depending on the setting, look, space available, and type of crop, we can make the beds 4’ (1.22 meters), 8’ (2.5 meters), or 12’ (3.6 meters) long. This is a very efficient use of material.
We DON’T make 16’ (5 meters) long garden beds. Why? We know ourselves (and most of the rest of humanity) - we will be tempted to not walk around a garden bed to access the other side without stepping into the garden - which is a real raised bed garden “no-no”! Compaction is a real risk, as well as trampling plants, encouraging weed growth, or breaking some of the restraints installed in the box below soil level.
By the way, one of the ways to economize is to purchase damaged fence rails. If the damage is moderate, it’s easy to orient the pieces in such a way that the damage is concealed. We’ve been able to purchase damaged pieces for as much as 70% off the usual price. Not bad!
Raised Garden Bed Plans
While nothing fancy, we’ve prepared a set of raised garden bed plans with parts and dimensions for you to cut the pieces you’ll need for common bed configurations. Plus, here are some additional things to keep in mind before you get started building a raised garden bed:
For a 4’ x 4’ unit, you’ll need 4 corner posts, 4 caps, and 8 - 4’ pieces of rail.
When building a 4’ x 8’ unit, you’ll need 4 corner posts, 2 inline posts, 6 post caps, 4 - 4’ fence rails, and 4 - 8’ rails.
If you build a 4’ x 12’ unit, you’ll need 4 corner posts, 4 inline posts, 8 post caps, 4 - 12’ sections of fence rail, and 4 - 4’ sections of fence rail.
Bottom Line
Instead of buying a pre-made garden box, it’s easy to build a DIY raised garden bed yourself. You don’t need to have a full workshop, as only a few tools are required. Plus, supplies are readily available at most local hardware stores. So, as Jay always says, why not JUST DO IT YOURSELF?! There are lots of great raised garden bed ideas you could try!
You’re welcome to leave us a comment if you used our plans to make your own raised garden bed. We love engaging in conversations with our readers and viewers! Also, feel free to check out our video if you want to see how Dirt Farmer Jay went about making his own vinyl raised garden beds. Have fun!
