RS, I am very pleased with my raised beds. What is extra helpful is having them sized for hoop frames from side to side, so you can cover the
whole thing if desired. My next door neighbor's farm, whose wife is in the local gardening club, has beautiful raised gardens with those hoops, saw that yesterday morning. I'll go back and take pics for you (and the boss) and post them.
Yup.
This one YouTube channel we found that The Woman liked was this farm girl in Western Ohio in roughly the same Zone as we are: Zone 6a/b.
Was minimally aware of hoops and covers prior to that, but got a real education watching her as far as the amount of frost/freeze protection they provide.
Her paid day job is as a seed evaluator - companies send her seeds they develop, to grow and evaluate, which she does and then reports back to the companies. Pretty cool gig.
Currently planning on using ladder meshes - which is used to tie masonry brick/block walls together - for hoops:
Relatively cheap and the thinking being that they would be a little more sturdy that just a single wire and because they would provide easy access to all areas of the bed.
Don is also very knowledgeable about raised beds I bet.
I'm sure.
His has irrigation, life is good.
He has to ... he's in Texas ...
of course today just google raised bed gardens and you'll get all the pictures you need.
You can build these from scratch pretty easily, or buy kits, or just the corner connectors.
Yup have watched a few YouTubes on constructing them.
One of the ones I thought was pretty cool was this one where the guy went over these corner connectors which are available from the Depot and Lowes:
Pretty slick ... and relatively cheap ... depending on how high you want to go.
The downsides are you limited to 2 x 6's if you want to go up multiple levels ... and it's still not as cheap as just using screws.
I'm guessing the Chinesium cedar boards used in mine will last five years. Just remember not to have pressure treated boards near veggies.
Actually I am looking at PT boards ... but it will depend on the method used to treat them.
Hopefully I'll find some stickers still on them when I disassemble them.
Or put a plastic barrier in. I did that on raised beds in NC.
I well may do that.
Just don't want veggie roots going into the treated wood. Particularly strawberries because they have strong roots.
The strawberries aren't going anywhere ... at least anytime soon.
as we get older, bending over constantly becomes less fun.
Yeah ... for me, bending has never been fun.
In fact, much like standing, I can't do it for any length of time.
I use a kneeler to garden and plant with, and that has worked well.
I have one ... but I'm about as fond of kneeling as I am of bending or standing. Often use it to sit on the ground, keeps the butt dry.
I'd much prefer to "garden while sitting" ...
