Raised Garden Bed Tutorial
Planting a garden soon? Follow this guide to build a simple raised garden bed! These cheap raised garden beds will last for years!
Raised garden beds are a great way to create an organized garden space, even when you don’t have a ton of room to work with. They also provide easy drainage and help keep pests out. We DIY’d our own 4′ x 8′ raised garden beds and they work GREAT! This post will show you how to build raised garden beds that will last for years.
Ready to build your own raised garden beds? Below is the exact tutorial on how we made ours! (Short on time? Pin this post to reference later!)
How To Make Cheap Raised Garden Beds
(Affiliate links are provided below for convenience. For more information see my disclosure, here.)
Building Materials & Tools:
- 2″ x 10″ Lumber
- 12″ Swanson Speed Square
- Carpenter’s Pencil
- Tape Measure
- Dewalt 60V Circular Saw
- Drill
- 3.5″ Deck Screws
We chose to use untreated 2″ x 10″ construction lumber but build the frame. It’s cheap, contains no unwanted chemicals, and will last 5-10 years depending on climate. In wet climates the wood may need to be replaced in as little as 5 years. In a drier climate they should hold up well for 10+ years. Many people chose to build raised garden bed frames with pressure treated lumber. While treated lumber does last longer, but it also costs about double! In addition to the added expense, the chemicals used in the pressure treating process can seep into the soil
Each 4′ x 8′ raised bed requires three 2″ x 10″ boards.
Building The Wood Bed Frames
To get started, using a 12″ Swanson Speed Square, we marked two of the boards at 4′ and made the cuts using a Dewalt 60V Circular Saw (any circular saw should do the trick, we used this one).
Related: How to Build a Rustic DIY Patio Table
Once all of the cuts were made, it was time to assemble the beds. We placed three 3.5″ deck screws along each corner to secure the frames into place.
Psssttt..
Want to know which plants do BEST in raised beds? Grab my free cheat sheet!
Moving And Filling The Raised Garden Beds
After the raised beds were finished, we moved them to the back yard to fill them up with soil. We decided not to lay any cardboard or landscape cloth down beneath the soil. Instead we used a weed-wacker to cut the grass down extremely short and left the clippings as our base.
We will see how well this method works and may opt for something different next year. (UPDATE: this method worked great for us, there was no need to add an extra barrier.)
Related: Small Patio Makeover REVEAL (on a budget!)
After doing some research on Better Homes and Gardens, we decided to go with a ‘premium grower’s mix’ for our soil. The mix was made up of 1/3 top soil, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 compost. We purchased the soil from our local nursery.
(Don’t forget to pin this post to your Garden Ideas board on Pinterest!)
Planting The Garden
After the two beds were filled, it was time for the fun part – planting!
Grab my free cheat sheet to know which crops thrive in raised beds! Enter your name & email below and I’ll send you the cheat sheet instantly!
I used Popsicle sticks and my favorite DYMO embossed label maker to make simple (and cheap!) labels for my crops.
Looking for more outdoor inspiration? You’re gonna love these posts:
How to Style A Small Patio (on a budget!)
9 Outdoor Rugs on Amazon That’ll Transform Your Outdoor Space
How to Build Cheap Raised Garden Beds
Best Crops for Raised Garden Beds Cheat Sheet
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I love your garden map diagram. Ha!! Very organized. ??
You guys are so handy!! I wish I could build my own little garden. Great post babe!!
xx,
Abby
Thanks! Luckily I had my husband around to do all the hard work 😉
What kind of flowers grow well in a raised bed? What about perennials?
I think perennials would do great! I have lavender in mine, but I’ve seen other people grow marigolds and daffodils too!
Thanks for the info. Since it’s getting late in the season, I’m just going to throw a few annuals in and see how they do. Practice makes perfect!
These look great and simple! How’d the depth do for you? Would you recommend going deeper or did your plants do well at that soil depth?
The depth worked great! I don’t think you’d need to go any deeper than this.
how did you not get grass growing up from below? don’t you need to kill the grass before the dirt?
By cutting the grass down to almost nothing and filling in with soil, we didn’t have any issues with grass growing up through the soil. If you are worried about that, I would recommend putting a layer of weed barrier down to be safe.