Raised bed gardens?

[zacattack]

My kids convinced me to do a garden this year. So, now I need to figure out how to have a raised bed, without it being permanent. I was thinking of just growing them in the plastic buckets or even 5 gallon buckets. Anyone have any other ideas or methods they use? Mostly we have tomato, cucumber, and sunflowers.

 

[Flben]

you can get concrete corners that take 2x8s and just set on the ground

 

[Northern-Nomad]

I move around a lot for my job so I decided to give these a try this year. Got the barrels from a diner nearby for $10 per. So far the only issue has been the little bear moving the dirt from one to another.

 

[StuckoYota99]

We used galvanized raised garden beds off Amazon 4' long x 2' wide. We have 10 them in our garden.

 

[SWOHTR]

Don’t do the pot thing, it’s so annnoying and they rip over and get root bound.

Do the 2x8 thing with concrete corners.

 

[3forks]

Others have given you pretty good ideas, but you can use unframed mounds, too.

We use traditional raised beds, but a neighbor doesn’t use anything but mounds on the ground and they seem to get just as much production as we do.

 

[dlee56]

Any reason you can’t do an in ground bed?
We wanted to do raised beds but the soil is so dang expensive we did in ground and the produce was incredible, and the setup/care was super easy. Rented a big tiller from a local hardware store for $40 and prepped the whole 15’x 30’ bed in a day. That being said we are approaching it more for the food production (peppers, tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes) so for a hobby garden some of the other options may be better. We did use some of those 15gal grow bags off amazon and they held up well for the season, will be using them again for sunchokes this year.

 

[LongWayAround]

My neighbor bought some sort of crate from Craigslist. They look like 1x8's with metal fasteners at the corners. I see them all over town.

 

[Wheels]

We have a 4x4’ raised bed made out of cedar boards, had to add screening around it to keep the cats and deer out of it.

 

[ericmcd]

I used a culvert that I cut to the height I wanted with a torch. If you have access to any old ones you can make a bunch and they look good and will last forever

 

[zacattack]

Any reason you can’t do an in ground bed?
We wanted to do raised beds but the soil is so dang expensive we did in ground and the produce was incredible, and the setup/care was super easy. Rented a big tiller from a local hardware store for $40 and prepped the whole 15’x 30’ bed in a day. That being said we are approaching it more for the food production (peppers, tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes) so for a hobby garden some of the other options may be better. We did use some of those 15gal grow bags off amazon and they held up well for the season, will be using them again for sunchokes this year.

Our subdivision is home to about a million rabbits, our plants on the ground don’t stand a chance

 

[Trumpkin The Dwarf]

Our subdivision is home to about a million rabbits, our plants on the ground don’t stand a chance

Sounds like the perfect excuse to teach your kids about trapping and skinning... Rabbit eats better than celery anyways!

 

[svivian]

Buy some old stock tanks a rancher has for cheap. They work great

 

[I live in round valley]

Check out straw bale gardening. A very non-permanent option that works well and is cost effective

 

[Agross]

We built a couple at our place with cinder blocks. You can go however high you want. I had a bunch of em already so only had to buy about half of em, when they went on sale. I only went two courses high and the rabbits have left em alone. I may go another course higher this year just for ease of use. We live in the middle of the woods/thick stuff, we have an unreal amount of rabbits around. It’s the deer we have to deal with.