Bachelor on the Cheap

By Mike Thayer

I love to garden and I've got a new place to create one this season having moved from an apartment to a house.  I inherited an established yard and there are plenty of existing plantings - evergreens, ornamental grasses, ivy - along the perimeter of the yard, but the middle of the back yard is a blank canvas, ample room to get creative in developing a vegetable garden, with space to put in some flower beds to boot.

Enter a raised bed garden, no digging required and self watering!

Why break ground, till, clear grass and work to amend the soil when I can put together a couple raised bed gardens instead?  Besides, harvesting veggies and cutting flowers from a raised garden is MUCH easier on the knees and I love the concept of adding a self watering feature to the raised beds!

Here's the materials list:

• Six 12' 2x6s
• Three 12' deck boards
• Two 10' 2x4s
• One 8' 2x4
• Four 8' 2x2s
• 24' of 4" diameter perforated drain pipe with sleeve
• Pond liner
• Exterior screws
• Raised bed planter mix
• 1/2' vinyl tubing for drainage
• 1-1/2" CPVC (fill tube)

This project should take me two, maybe three days to assemble, position and plant the raised beds.  A couple of nice benefits to having the raised beds will be the ability to easily cover the bed with an old fitted sheet if there is a frost warning in the forecast and that self watering feature - watering the roots of the plants which cuts down on diseases like blight and mildew. 

Stay tuned, cost breakdown and project pics coming soon!

I love the cedar and corrugated metal look

Related:  What I built for my apartment patio a few years back