- Joined
- Nov 12, 2014
- Messages
- 910
- Location
- SE Queensland, Australia
- Website
- letsgotravelaustralia.com
- Climate
- Sub-Tropical
Yeah my raised veggie beds are finally made and I’m excited. So grab a and sit back and have a read, it’s long and has lots of pics. For those that don’t know, we live on ¾ acre in SEQ north of Brisbane.
Area the veggie bed is going.
We have been here for a little under 2 years, when we came here the place was in need of a great deal of work inside and out. Some of these jobs took higher priority over doing a veggie patch area, including getting some chickens and native bees. We have been very busy little bees, weekends are very busy around here, my hubby, Chris, reckons he goes to work for a rest.
He took several days off around the Ekka (Brisbane Show) public holiday to give us a good 5 days in a row to get the beds made. We had all the bits we needed ready to go.
We did use one of those days to go to our sons and take up the gravel/rock mulch he had in a back yard. They didn’t want it due to little kids and we did to put at the bottom of our raised veggie beds. Took us the whole day after 5 trailer loads of back breaking work we came to the conclusion we should have just bought some gravel. But our son and family are thrilled it’s gone. So really we had 4 days to build the beds.
We bought some new corrugated iron off Gumtree for $10 a sheet, sizes ranged from 2.4m to 3.8m. These were off cuts from a roofing contractor. I wanted raised beds as its better on the back, and I’m not getting any younger, we plan on being here well into our old age. So the beds are made out of corrugated iron with 2 of the beds with timber around the top.
There are 3 rows of beds laid out as follows. 9m x 1.2m x 80cm (9000mm x 1200mm x 800mm) high long bed, a row of 6 round corrugated 1.2m diameter x 80cm (1200mm x 80mm) high beds. Grouped two together with approx. 80cm gap in between each two. And a 9m x 1.2m x 40cm (9000mm x 1200mm x 400mm) lower bed. This bed it lower as it will be for the climbing plants, which we will put a permanent trestles up in the middle of the bed.
The 9m beds are built as one but are divided into 3 x 3m long beds, treated as if separate beds, fully divided off from each other. In the middle of each 3m length there is some extra cross bracing support to give strength and stop from bowing outwards. The crossing bracing is in the bottom half of the beds so not to interfere with growing the veggies. They were built slightly differently in the 800mm high beds.
The beds sit straight on the ground, levelled out side to side, so not dug in at all. They follow the slight slope downwards of this area, keeping good drainage. Due to the Poinciana tree, bamboo, mulberry in chicken pen and some palms we did cut down we were concerned about tree roots running under the bed and then growing up into the beds, looking for all the lovely nutrients in the veggie soil. I had a small 400mm bed and one of the round beds here that we had been using and when I did move them I found several tree roots growing in there. So we decided to run some thick black builders plastic under the beds.
On top of that we put 50mm or so of the gravel we had collected from our son to keep good drainage.
On the 400mm high bed I put some shade cloth over the stones to stop them mixing with the veggie soil.
Then the higher beds, 800mm long bed and the 800mm round beds were part filled with palm fronds and logs.
Then each higher bed was topped up with some cheaper but still good fill soil to the 400mm mark of each of the higher beds leaving 400mm approx. for the good veggie soil.
By now our 5 days are up, we are thrilled and totally stuffed with all our hard work.
Hubby went back to work for 2 days before 12m3 of good veggie soil arrived. He decided in that 2 days that his back, our backs couldn’t handle shovelling 12m3 of soil so he hired a little digger to move the soil.
Which made short work of it and we got it all done in a day. Phew
Next day Chris started putting the timber around the top edges, on the cnr joins and to hide the side joins of the corrugation. Looks great, protects my arms etc from the top of the corrugation and gives me a little ledge to put things on when planting.
He finished it off the following weekend and I put some artificial turf in-between each row and around the round beds.
Area the veggie bed is going.
We have been here for a little under 2 years, when we came here the place was in need of a great deal of work inside and out. Some of these jobs took higher priority over doing a veggie patch area, including getting some chickens and native bees. We have been very busy little bees, weekends are very busy around here, my hubby, Chris, reckons he goes to work for a rest.
He took several days off around the Ekka (Brisbane Show) public holiday to give us a good 5 days in a row to get the beds made. We had all the bits we needed ready to go.
We did use one of those days to go to our sons and take up the gravel/rock mulch he had in a back yard. They didn’t want it due to little kids and we did to put at the bottom of our raised veggie beds. Took us the whole day after 5 trailer loads of back breaking work we came to the conclusion we should have just bought some gravel. But our son and family are thrilled it’s gone. So really we had 4 days to build the beds.
We bought some new corrugated iron off Gumtree for $10 a sheet, sizes ranged from 2.4m to 3.8m. These were off cuts from a roofing contractor. I wanted raised beds as its better on the back, and I’m not getting any younger, we plan on being here well into our old age. So the beds are made out of corrugated iron with 2 of the beds with timber around the top.
There are 3 rows of beds laid out as follows. 9m x 1.2m x 80cm (9000mm x 1200mm x 800mm) high long bed, a row of 6 round corrugated 1.2m diameter x 80cm (1200mm x 80mm) high beds. Grouped two together with approx. 80cm gap in between each two. And a 9m x 1.2m x 40cm (9000mm x 1200mm x 400mm) lower bed. This bed it lower as it will be for the climbing plants, which we will put a permanent trestles up in the middle of the bed.
The 9m beds are built as one but are divided into 3 x 3m long beds, treated as if separate beds, fully divided off from each other. In the middle of each 3m length there is some extra cross bracing support to give strength and stop from bowing outwards. The crossing bracing is in the bottom half of the beds so not to interfere with growing the veggies. They were built slightly differently in the 800mm high beds.
The beds sit straight on the ground, levelled out side to side, so not dug in at all. They follow the slight slope downwards of this area, keeping good drainage. Due to the Poinciana tree, bamboo, mulberry in chicken pen and some palms we did cut down we were concerned about tree roots running under the bed and then growing up into the beds, looking for all the lovely nutrients in the veggie soil. I had a small 400mm bed and one of the round beds here that we had been using and when I did move them I found several tree roots growing in there. So we decided to run some thick black builders plastic under the beds.
On top of that we put 50mm or so of the gravel we had collected from our son to keep good drainage.
On the 400mm high bed I put some shade cloth over the stones to stop them mixing with the veggie soil.
Then the higher beds, 800mm long bed and the 800mm round beds were part filled with palm fronds and logs.
Then each higher bed was topped up with some cheaper but still good fill soil to the 400mm mark of each of the higher beds leaving 400mm approx. for the good veggie soil.
By now our 5 days are up, we are thrilled and totally stuffed with all our hard work.
Hubby went back to work for 2 days before 12m3 of good veggie soil arrived. He decided in that 2 days that his back, our backs couldn’t handle shovelling 12m3 of soil so he hired a little digger to move the soil.
Which made short work of it and we got it all done in a day. Phew
Next day Chris started putting the timber around the top edges, on the cnr joins and to hide the side joins of the corrugation. Looks great, protects my arms etc from the top of the corrugation and gives me a little ledge to put things on when planting.
He finished it off the following weekend and I put some artificial turf in-between each row and around the round beds.
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