How to grade and prepare for raised bed garden

[Smf834]

My wife wants to rebuild our existing garden area. Existing setup: wooden raised beds sits on cement pavers that sits on clay soil. To make things worse, after 20 yrs of negligence, pavers have at least couple inches of sod grew on top of it and the pavers glue to the weed screen underneath it.

So far i have used the tractor to knock the pavers out and remove them manually by hand. And now i have a soupy, messy clay mess on my hand. It is springtime here in Pacific nw and the soil is wet to begin with. I have ag tires on my tractor and i feel like no way i can grade the soil to be smooth enough to rebuild using cinder blocks.

Any thoughts?

 

[jaxs]

There's missing pieces in what you want to accomplish.
If you plan using cinder blocks for enclosures they are the only part that needs to be level which normally must be done by hand. Why can't you set the blocks up,fill beds and plant then clean the surounding area up with tractor after soil drys later?

 

[Smf834]

Because i want to dig up the pavers for better drainage before setting cinder blocks back in.

 

[beowulf]

I can't help with all of your issues, but can tell you what has worked well for us. We made several raised beds (about 4' x 8') out of 8 x 8 x 16" cinder blocks stacked two high and capped with 2 x 8 x 16" caps. We staggered the second tier and then filled the cavities with dirt. We did not mortar them together. Inside we laid in sheet metal stucco lathe to keep the gophers out. Then filled with soil, compost, dried leaves and such. They will last that way for years - although the one with black berries is starting to push out - if any do push out it is an easy fix. To contol weeds between the beds we put down landscape fabric and then bark-mulch. I will attach a photo.

 

[Yander]

I don't know how wet you're grounded is but with ag tires if it's not too wet I would go nuclear on that site.

Take your tractor and just rip and tear every bit of it up obviously put the dirt in a pile you'll need it later.

Take your loader and take off the first few inches of topsoil put it in a pile for later. Get a small truck load of gravel or large depending on how many raised beds and spread that over the area making it as level as you possibly can.

If you have access to any old logs that are not treated put those in the bottom of your raised bed for the first half. Look up hugelkultur and you'll see why I'm telling you that.

Should you experiment with hugelkultur in your garden? | Hello Homestead

Hugelkultur is a method of planting that involves growing plants on a mound of decaying material. The name means mound culture” or “hill culture” in German.

hellohomestead.com

 

[TN8Man]

I tried using raise beds last year but I ended up removing them for this year. They just limited my growing area.

 

[Rockbadchild]

You can have the desirer to do what you want to do all you want but the weather need to cooperated right now I want plant my tomato's but I can't the soil is frozen so I have to wait... just like you might have to wait for the soil to dry up ... the pioneers didn't had the tools we have but yet they accomplish great things because they took advantage of favorable condition and waited for these to happen....

with that being said why are you holding to this area ? cant you move it like 10' to one side to start fresh ?

 

[Smf834]

Because the garden is fenced in, so we are limited to the spot. My main concern is leveling the ground, but it seems the ag tires and wet soil isn’t gonna work. I even tried the box blade, but i guess there’s too many large craters that i need to fill them up somewhat before i can level them

 

[2manyrocks]

When it dries out a bit, the ground will be more workable to fill holes. Wet clay is going to clump together.

If you could find someone with a old Gravey walk behind rotary plow, you could pulverize a garden area into a flat seed bed pretty effectively once it dries out assuming you don't have a bunch of rocks and you get the pavers out of the way.

 

[Smf834]

I think i just need to convince my wife “patience is a virtue”… you can’t fight mother nature.