DIY Raised Garden Bed

Hey Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Raised bed gardening is all the rage and for good reason. Wow, you can get a lot of gardening done in a small space whether you live in the city, suburbia, or out in a large area. And what's not to love about it? It puts it higher, it makes it productive, suppresses weeds, makes less water be used, and it's just a fun way to keep your garden ordered. Well we've built this great garden box and I'm going to walk you through step-by-step how to use vinyl fence parts from your home center and I've got a great resource sheet I'm going to give you. Stay tuned. Hey Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Dirt Farmer Maggie and I love gardening and we especially like having these raised bed garden boxes. Now what you see here is a double decker. There's different configurations, single heights, triple heights, but in this episode I'm going to show you step-by-step how to build this system using off-the-shelf parts from your home improvement center. You're going to need a basic set of tools and before you get started I suggest you go to our website at www.DirtFarmerJay.com and download the little resource sheet. Now it's not much to look at, it's all hand-drawn, but it'll give you a lot of information very quickly including dimensions, cut points, how to lay things out, and common configurations. So what you're looking at here is a 4x8 setup. We build these in 4x4, 4x8, and 4x12 and they're very modular just depending on the amount of corner posts and line posts and the length of the side boxes. We always build them, or the side rails excuse me, we always build them four foot wide and the space we put in between each of the gardens is about four foot. Now I'm not showing you our garden right now. You want to know why? It's not photogenic. We're in the middle of refurbishment right now and when it's done including a complete layout of these and all the irrigation that goes in them and the chip paths, we'll be sure to share it with you and show you what we've done and maybe you can pass on to us some of the artistry you've created in your food plot as well. Well let's get started and I'm going to show you step-by-step how to build these beautiful and durable garden boxes. All right to make these raised garden boxes out of vinyl fence materials is a basic set of tools and let's just walk them. Of course you're going to need a tape measure, a pencil, you need one of these types of squares will make it a lot easier and you'll see why in a few minutes. Although you could use a combination square, you'll need some kind of saw with a fairly fine tooth blade. We like this little six and a half inch cordless circular saw but you could use a fine tooth saber saw or known as a jigsaw commonly. You'll need a little four inch grinder with a little fine cut off wheel. You'll use that to cut the sides or the ends of the slots not the sides. Also either just a standard bare hacksaw blade or something that's in a holder as well to finish up the cuts in the corner. And then of course you need the material itself. Now we use here in the United States five inch by five inch. I don't know what the equivalent is in our European friends countries but five by five post material and the fence rail itself is one and a half by five and a half and of course the slots that it goes in match the dimensions of that fence material. Here's something I would suggest just a tip for you. Number one, get as much recycled stuff as you can. This will last for several years. It's got uv protectant in it so it'll stay white out there without getting sun beat without having to be painted. But go for recycled or when you go down to your home improvement store always look to see if there's damaged goods. It's not uncommon when they're loading the bunks with these large 16 foot sections of this material of a fence rail for somebody to hit it on something or to put a fork through it and dent it. As long as it's still structurally sound and you can turn the damage of the inside why not buy it less expensively. In one case I was able to buy some at 70% off. Not bad. So that's another way to do this. Something to think about also if you notice on this post right here this is actually a line post or a triple rail and it's been used before but it'll do just fine for us. These because the holes go straight through you can see there's a match and a match those are line posts or excuse me the inline posts won't work as corners but I try to use those if at all possible and enlarge them to a double deck stack and I'll show you the layout on that in a moment. Lastly I've provided some construction notes and some drawings for dimensions and tips and techniques. It's available as a pdf up on our website at www.dirkfarmerj.com you can go up there and download them and I'll provide the link in the description below and while these are all hand drawn they'll still be handy to you. I think you'll get some good information from them it'll make it easier for you. This is just one type we'll actually be doing some other types of beds in the future. This is a double decker you can do single single deckers triple deckers with different reinforcement but these are the supplies. I did forget one other thing that I should have added in here. You're going to need a drill bit about a half inch drill bit a drill motor and you're going to need some poly rope as well and I'll explain that in a few minutes. Well let's go ahead and get started with laying out these corner and inline posts. Okay let's go ahead and lay out uh let's do an inline post to begin with. Now I'm using something that's already been uh where the sockets have been cut here and you can see if I turn it this way and look at you this way that that's a through cut so it's got to be an inline post that I make out of this post. By the way the price point on this was was free so um there's going to be some waste in this but it's all right simply because the price was so great. So the first thing we're going to do is I need to start all of my posts at 17 inches long so there's my 17 inch mark right there and what I'll do is go ahead and extend that line all the way around because I will be cutting it using the saw and I'm just going to go ahead and boom right around. Okay so I'm going to cut on that side of the line I'm going to end up with a nice 17 inch uh inline post here and depending on the configuration whether it's a 4x4, a 4x8 or 4x12 box depends on how many of these inline rails you need. That's all laid out for you here in the instruction sheets that are available to you. The second thing I need to do these slots are only wide enough to accommodate one rail which is not tall enough for our system. We want a double like this so what I need to do is enlarge the slots uh to make that at least not enlarge them, lengthen them. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to kind of cheat. I love these little um triangle rules here uh and so what I'm going to do is find on the wiggle side over here this marker what's in line and I'm just going to extend the line out. Now to know where I need to stop by the way let's first of all I kind of got ahead of myself here let's go ahead and measure this at 11 inches because that's two times five and a half that is the length of the socket and I'll go ahead and just throw in a mark and I'm going to make it a pencil width wider and then I'm going to take the same thing over here find the other wiggle point on here and just simply extend the line okay so there I've got this it's going to come out we're going to cut it outwards let's roll it and do that again there's my 11 okay so there's your waist right there now let's just look at this really quickly though just to review what you're doing 17 inch overall length two inches from here to here 11 inches from here to here and then what's that leave you four inches at the bottom right there overall 17 you can see all the dimensions right there all right now let's go ahead and get this cut you'll notice though that right here this is too close to do the next one this is actually going to be waste and like I said the price point is right if you're really you know concerned about that and you want to shorten things you can do that but we found the 17 inch length to be perfect for what we need it gives the right amount of anchorage in the ground and so might be a false economy to try to shorten the post up so here we go let's get these going here's what we're going to do we're going to use a little cordless circular saw we set it fairly shallow and we're just simply going to do a plunge cut and you won't be able to see this very well well I'll tell you what I'm going to have you come around the other side here and watch from this side let's see what's happening see right here so I'm going to do a plunge cut let's stop right here where before we overrun the line okay let's do it again okay now we have both of those there now what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch tools and I'm going to go to a grinder with a little four inch cut off wheel here we go we're going to simply enter this in and again let's not overrun the cuts I'm just going to bring it down right here till it touches the kerf touches and then we'll hand saw it out here we go and of course we'd be doing this on the other side as well now we're going to use a hacksaw all right let's go ahead and clean up the corners here you can either use a stand or just a hacksaw blade I like to orient it so the teeth are coming towards me so it cuts on the pole instead of binding or you can use one of these little handheld uh holders like this either way so let's start with a simple I'm just going to simply put her in here and pull cut until I get to the corner do the same thing on the other you can see it start to let loose right away rotate the saw and there you go now you have an extended slot we're going to do the same thing on the other side okay let's go ahead and cut it to length we're just going to rotate around as we go here cutting to the right side of the line my right side your left so we don't cut into the overall 17 inch length there we have an inline post right here that's the top where the cap's going to go this is the part that gets buried in the ground kind of completes a socket in the ground to stabilize it the other thing we're going to do right here though is drill in a little bit of a hole right here you're going to need a hole on the inside of these here where a piece of twine is going to go to the other side and when this is filled with two fence rails you need a place to be able to pass the string through so we're going to go ahead and do that you could actually do that before you drill uh if you're doing or before you cut if you've got a um a whole pole that doesn't have or excuse me a post that doesn't have any of the sockets cut but we'll need to do a little bit of relief there uh for the string to go through or the poly rope you'll see what i mean on that in just a little bit one other thing i need to mention to you is that if you are cutting these sockets from pieces of fence posts that already have partial cuts in it it is very difficult to put a space on the side right you'll need a notch or a half drill right there where the restraint system goes in from these side to side to stop the sides of the bed from bowing it's a really simple restraint system i simply use the poly baling cord that's for alfalfa bales you can get an agricultural store or you can use poly rope that you purchase from your favorite home improvement store but if you try to drill where you already have part of the material gone the drill is going to want to go off the side and deflect it's not going to work so the case where you have something like this if you just go halfway down and in this case i can see where the halfway down is you can use like a pair of nippers like this okay so what i'm going to do here is cut a notch at the halfway point so that's five and a half let's just go and throw that on there so i'm not guessing and i'm going to go ahead and just put a notch like here there's nothing scientific just has to be big enough that the rope can pass through it and then i'm going to come right over here and do the same thing let's get that big enough that you're not messing with it this is hidden and it's going when it's standing up in the garden like this this is going to the inside of the bed there's another post on the other way now we need to do the other match set all right let's move on to the corner posts how they differ from the inline posts the inline posts have got that slot going all the way through whereas the corner posts have those slots in adjacent one's going to be here one will be there or it'll always be right around the corner not across from each other okay and when you're building these uh not that i know how this happened but a friend told me about this that you can end up with a lot of the wrong parts if you're not careful so keep good track of how many corners you need how many inlines so you don't end up wasting material or maybe having extras left over so you have to build more anyway so what we're going to do right now is we're going to go ahead and lay out a corner layout so we know right away you have a 17 inch length we have a 2 inch start on the socket top we add 11 inches to that that takes 13 and we should have 4 inches left over so that's our basic layout for uh the two of them and we need the same thing on this side right here adjacent so we're going to do 2 inches right here we're going to do um 11 inches on top of that so we'll have 13 and then we add 4 and we end up with 17 and there is layouts for this so let's go ahead and do some real quick marks on this there's the top or excuse me bottom of the socket bottom of the socket overall post lengths let's just double check i got a little rounded off there there we go all right and then we're going to go ahead and put the top and bottom of the sockets in the nice thing about pencil on this vinyl it all cleans up afterwards as well so we know this and if you look on my square right here i have marked you can barely see it but right there is where one of the socket lines are so i can just throw that right on there and just mark the socket and there it is flip it to the other side i've got the other side right there ready to go fast huh so there's one just do the other side okay so notice or just double check your work they're adjacent to each other let's go ahead and get those cut out all right now we have corner posts we have line posts let's go ahead and do a mock-up we'll set up the table of all the parts you need for a four by eight all right we've now cut all of our corner posts and depending on the configuration of the box that we're going to build all the line posts as well now i want to show you very quickly how adaptable this system is and how you can end up uh using very efficiently the material that you buy uh the fence rails are sold in 16 foot sections so it makes it very efficient because everything on here is built on four foot increments so the standard boxes we build are either four by four four by eight or four by twelve again all multiples of four come out of 16 foot lengths of sidewall very nicely so i'm showing you right here uh the basic components if i was going to build a four by four box obviously this is not set up to scale i would start with four corner posts like this i would end up with my sections double stacks of four foot rail so i would need two four six eight four footers uh that's all on the sheet that i give you as well for the recipe for each one of these boxes i and that would build the sides i would screw them together and then of course here's the caps and you put caps on everything uh and bury it in there square it up and fill it up and enjoy it including getting uh some irrigation i'll show you in another episode there how to do that but this is the first configuration the second one again not to scale if we were going to put four foot in walls and eight foot sidewalls then what i would do is throw in these line rails right through the middle and they would be set right at the four foot section so not to scale but envision it with me four foot this way eight foot this way but that's two fours this is centered right here uh and that becomes your four by eight well the next one up is if you're going to do a four by twelve again the sidewalls would be uh twelve footers you would need four twelve footers and four uh four footers to build that now what you would do is put these at the third one third length right like this uh and what you would have is four foot on this side four foot four foot four foot and then four foot here uh and then there are those tensioners that are put in across the middle and we did some notches on this one right here as you can see all these would be notched and when you install it square it up then you're going to use some poly twine twine it through i use a trucker's hitch to tighten it not to hour gloss it and not to let it bow out keep it nice and straight and we put about four foot aisles between the boxes we find that that's wide enough for two of us to work at and to get up and down there and to let vines and plants spill over the side here let's go ahead and assemble one of these very quickly and then you can see just how simple it is and how easily you can reconfigure it let's do that all right so when you go to cut this material this pvc fence rail uh it's got these little stiffener ribs in it and vinyl is a little bit grabby when you go to cut it so don't fall to the myth that these are called chop saws you're just gonna lower the blade in it you need to kind of gentle the blade into the material so it doesn't grab and you get a nice clean cut so we're going to go ahead i'm just using this little bit of scrap right here and as you can see in the background throws a lot of chips so i do all this operation all at once you can clean it up all at once so here we go we're going to take this which is now this like scrap piece it's really rough i'm going to put it over here i'm going to start the saw slow and steady is better and then what you can see here is we have a really nice cut that was the old end there's the new end and that's how you're going to cut these rails all right let's go ahead and assemble these now the uh the sequence that i always take is to begin with the ends are easier to handle and you'll see that i am running the uh running the rails through the body of the to the other side you'll see a little bit more about that to give it more rigidity but we make both sets of ends and then slide in the side panels and before assembling the other end depending if it's an 8 foot or a 12 foot box you also need to slide on your inline posts and then position them final when you put the box in the garden let's go ahead and get this going here so what i have here as you can see that's the two inch on the top there's the two on the top we're going to go ahead and start with a pair here and i'm going to go ahead and just move this out of the way i'll go ahead and run this in all the way to the other side and you can always double check these as you can see these are recycled some of them look pretty dingy but you know what they look great in the garden when you get mulch around them or vines coming over the side of them so don't worry about it you can invest in brand new if you want but you'll see some of that here here we've got two there i've got two that are going all the way and if you look in here you can see that i've pushed this all the way to the other side right there so those are mounted where i want them i'm just going to square them and that's really simple all we're going to do is use some screws i happen to have some two inchers not that you need that much but it makes it easier to reach in a little bit too and we're just going to come on down here you're going to see i'm just going to drive the screw right there to hold them in place and you don't need to follow me here but i'm just going to do the same thing from the other side okay so now those are affixed as you can see they're not going to come out of there i'm going to go ahead and move this over to the other again make sure that you mount it correctly i don't know i heard of a guy one time that did it this way but anyway you can just make sure you put it this way so they're all the same put them in till they're hard to the other side and you can see that in the end here they're going all the way here you get this really nice solid connection again a couple screws top and bottom all right now you have an end panel that's ready to go all right i'll go ahead and make up another one then we'll install the sides we now have the end panels put together and we're going to put in the side rails here and before we put the other end rail in we're going to go ahead and put these inline posts at the halfway mark let's go ahead you can see right here from there i'm going to go ahead and slide this in and because this goes all the way through this is simply going to butt against it right there we've got our first one in let's go ahead and take our second one we're just going to stack it on top of the other one and sometimes these are little shorts you just have to raise them and get them in there and then come around here i'm going to show you here on the top of these the 90 degree turns you'll need to adjust this till it's where it needs to be and as you can see this is colliding with that but now i can go ahead and drive a screw right there at the top and i'm going to go to the bottom and do the same thing all right we'll do the same thing on there next thing we're going to do is slide on our center posts all right now that we have our side rails in if you were doing a 12 foot bed you would need to place two of these here one at the four foot one at the eight foot mark since we're doing an eight foot bed we're going to place one of these starting on the other end we're going to slide this down along making sure yeah i just did it making sure to put them the right way this thicker part to the bottom this to the top and we're going to slide it down one other thing i need to make sure is those notches you're on the inside of the bed right now so with those notches right there need to go towards the inside and then the other side will be a match set of that notch that'll then allow uh the tie or the restraint system to go in so we're going to go ahead and slide it on and put it over here all right so we now have that inline post there in place uh this work table isn't big enough to do a four by eight so we're going to move it onto the floor here in the shop and we'll show you the completed bed uh and a few other little tips about this and let's go to it all right now we've assembled the whole four by eight box here you can see we're all the way over here uh eight foot sidewalls um everything's put together you can see down in this corner here uh that the screws on this right here hold the corners tight so you can uh flex it but it keeps it all together until you can square the box up there's screws right here as well that um allow you to put that center post where it needs to be on the center mark all right now it's time to install your new garden box out in your garden so a couple things you're going to do number one you'll notice that there's that much distance below the bottom edge of the sidewall and so you're just going to dig in this case six shallow pocket holes and i use a string line to get one edge where i want uh if it's in a whole set the right distance from what's already there or if you're putting the first ones uh square it up take time to make it look pretty because you're going to enjoy this for many years to come you're going to dig in these six pockets set these down until this sits on the ground um and then what happens is uh you may need to level them a little bit uh i'm not super particular but if you've got really hilly ground uh or lumpy then you may want put like shallow troughs along the side until this all settles down and has a solid footing all around the next thing you need to do because this is vinyl uh it's not going to have a lot of structural strength down through the middle especially when you get to the 12 footer so this is a really simple low tech restraint system do you remember those notches that we put on the side of the line post over here all we do is we take this type of poly twine that's used for baling alfalfa run it through those holes tie a loop and then simply do a cinch back like this now we don't over tighten it because if you over tighten it you're going to hour glass your sides will be caved in um and we don't over loosen it so you don't end up with bellies along the side when it gets filled with soil or potting mix or whatever your growing medium is so uh and then one other thing i would suggest is stand maybe 30 40 feet away look down the sides and get a good look of how straight they are and just do a little bit of work to fine adjust these and get them where you want and then you can just tie them off and that's going to stop those from spreading one other thing i would mention here and that is we put the restraint holes about the center point you can see right in line right where uh the two fence rails are and that does a good job of keeping these upright as you pull them it doesn't tend to take the post and do this or do that just kind of brings them in nice like that now the next thing to do is just to put the caps on that's just real simple they're just press-ons and as you can see that trims it up beautifully right away now the only thing that's left to do here is to take it in the garden and you have a couple choices i always try to put in irrigation from the get-go and we'll show you that in another video meanwhile you can go check out one there's a link in the description below just for general purpose drip watering using pvc and a 16 inch drill bit common ball valves pvc ball valves we adapt that system and we utilize that to make sure that the drip systems run in this so we're not dependent on hand watering all right so if you found this to be helpful or you would like to give us some more tips about what you're doing and to pass it on to your fellow viewers do so in the comment section below if you like the video please like it better yet subscribe to our channel and when you do ring the bell and you'll be notified approximately every friday of great content from maggie's kitchen here in the shop out in the garden the great product reviews until the next time this is dirt farmer j from dirtfarmerj.com