I FINALLY Have A Raised Bed Garden!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ก.ย. 2023
- I finally built my raised bed garden and in this video I will show you how you can build one too. We will be covering everything from measuring your space, figuring out how many beds you can fit, how much soil to order, how I amend my soil, and an experiment with hügelkultur. I am including a link to my google sheet with my example garden in the second tab. To edit click file in top left and either make copy to your google sheets account or download and edit offline. Planner: growepic.co/sheetplanner
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You had me at, "I made a spreadsheet"!.. a man after my understanding.
😂😂 I need that visual layout or I'm lost!
I was doing this the other day. I think my wife thinks I'm crazy at times. Comparing different sized beds, layouts, and overall prices. Want to make sure to get the most out of my yard size and the best option for the wallet. 👍
thanks for including screens how-to visuals as you worked...tremendously helpful tutorial. 🌱
Both high beds will do great, as all will, I'm sure. I prefer a half filled hugelkultur type raised bed as the walls protect my plants from the wind and keep the heat in, somewhat (eastern Ontario). I've never added anything other than water, and only if needed, and it just thrives every year! Good luck. Can't wait to see your results!
Any garden designed in a spreadsheet will be awesome!🌱 📊🌱
I think the hugelkultur bed will do worse at first bc of the soil settling (I think Kevin mentioned a while back that one of his HK beds settled like 6 inches in one year?) but over the years I think it will do better than straight soil since it's already inoculated with the fungal network in the logs :D
Agreed, the initial planting will do worse but overtime I suspect it will do better!
For the hugelkultur bed, why not add nitrogen compostables like kitchen scraps or grass clippings? That’s when that method really shines for me. Adding some red wigglers really helps too. You’re essentially composting in the bottom 2/3 of the bed, and planting on the top. That way the second year the bed is in theory more fertile than on the first year.
The worms will for sure colonize the bed quickly from my surrounding garden but for some reason I didn't think to add anything else buy logs, I guess to keep it simple.
Snow shovel aka manure shovel. I’m a San Diego/Chula Vista/Ramona native and now in Vermont.
So much to learn & experience!!!!!
I’ve become a lover of Birdies raised beds, cardboard, woodchips and pallets. I just sweep snow off pallet paths. So much easier that regular snow shoveling! I’m 77 and in great shape as a retired Montessori teacher and now owning my own pet sitting/dog walking business in Vermont. It’s awesome!!!!
That sounds fantastic, Vermont looks like a fun state to live in, once you get used to the cold!
It’s scary how excited I got when I heard the intro. This step by step set up was so helpful; I’m planning an expansion as well. Love the Google sheets method for planning; super helpful. Thanks for all the details and what a great addition to your garden. Enjoy!
Thank you, glad it helps!
I am team logs bed. I have been using this method-along with all my fall leaves- every year- and it works great.
My biggest grow bed is a hugelculture setup. I started mine around this time last year from the ground up. The winter did me good to make it settle and the cover crops (peas oats & hairy vetch) i planted in the fall percfectly came in the spring. Now its septmeber; im waiting on my corn for harvest, more pumkins and possible melons, acompanied by giant sunflowers for pollination.
Coming from zone 5 im rooting for the hugel bed.
In reality I know the hugelkukture will do better long term! I will have to see how much settling I get.
Thanks for going thru the whole process of planing, placing, filling and amending a raised bed so that it can be planted. I have watched many videos from many channels and yours is the first to go thru each step and not skip thru any part of the process. Letting the beds settle and telling us why is also good info.
Glad it was helpful!
Looking good! I used excel as well to map out my whole lot, but also superimposed a screenshot of the Google satelite image of my lot so I could put in existing structures to scale, changing the transparency of the image to be able to mark the cells underneath. I also used various shapes for trees & plants, filled in with different colors of each plant. I did the same thing as you with coloring in the square cells for where my greenhouse & raised planter bed frames will go. It's a great tool that many people have but don't think about using for garden planning.. Thanks for walking us through your process!
Very smart, I contemplated getting that serious and decided I would lose everyone watching haha. The simple sheets layout keeps it as accessible as possible. I used Google Earth to calculate all my irrigation pipe needs by measuring across the lot!
What a great mini masterclass you've given us. Thank you!
Really appreciate your thorough explanation of mapping the layout, filling the beds, why you chose the soil amendments that you did, and why it's good to wait a few days to plant. Excellent content!
Glad to hear it!
Nice, Jacques! Seeing the beds mapped on Google makes my organizing/teacher heart happy. Lol I also was thinking how to configure the beds I want to order. Maybe doing these videos ahead of the sale would be good, so we can prepare a bit as well. I’m excited to see how the two experiment beds do as well and thanks for the tip with bulk soil!
I was hustling to get this all placed! Was hoping to get it up sooner!
oh I'm glad I watched this before ordering mine. I had no idea og 6 in 1 was half the size of 8 in 1. A lot smaller than I thought it would be
Perfect timing on this video - I’m about to start a container garden with the Birdies patio bed. Thanks for the tip on the bulk soil!
Looks great! I personally ended up going with HD garden soil that was on sale (4x0.75 cu ft bags for $10) rather than buying from my local nursery. It was at least $100 cheaper even after everything that I added to the HD garden soil to improve it. You also have to be careful with hugelkultur. I made the mistake of using wet wood and ended up having a ton of branches sprouting from my beds. Its a pain in the butt to get them all out of my beds.
That sounds like a great deal, I've had these trunks sitting out on concrete for about a year so hoping they are actually toast
I really enjoy the videos
You cover things from beginning to end and toss in good data to understand the why (but in a short timeframe). Thank you !
Happy to hear this!
My little garden nerd heart is so happy!!
Perfect timing. I am going out to our new garden area today (formerly the now grown grandkids play area) to measure and plot out our growing new garden. This will include a few current beds as well as the 4 new Birdies beds we have ordered.
I had planned to use graph paper, but may try the spreadsheet method.
I ate food from my garden for the very first time tonight. Thank you, Jacques.
That is amazing to hear, nothing beats the feeling!
Thanks Jaques! And Paul. I can't wait until the past frost is over!
Happy to see that you have some Purple Tree Collards in your garden!
This is great. I still need 7 more Birdies bed. Maybe next year.
I love that you are going raised beds and a graph.
I literally just came into my air conditioned garden house/office/studio to cool off while I'm doing a bed reset to watch this! I might spring for some of those raised beds for a border of a growing field next year! You just reminded me to test my soil and amend it before I put my brassicas in!
I don’t plant a fall garden here in the Midwest but these are great suggestions and ideas for next spring 👍🏻. Love your channel.
Looking good Jacques! Interested to see your hugelkultur experiment results...
Very curious to see it play out
Thank you SO SO much for all you do! Thanks to your videos, I've FINALLY ventured into true gardening, and just got my first set of seeds started! Thank you for giving us newbies the confidence and knowledge to get started
This is amazing to hear and I am very happy to hear this!
Oh my goodness!!! A spreadsheet is brilliant! I downloaded countless apps trying to find one that actually worked for a basic, simple garden 😭
I settled on the free version of Planner 5D but a simple spreadsheet is so....simple! Ty for the idea.
Also at 7:39, I contacted a local nursery and they pointed me to a supplier 6min from my house! Dude this video was gold for me!
Love to see this, glad you were able to find a supplier!
I would guess that the woodand wood chip bed will do better , the mycelium and water retention from the logs will boost your productivity buuuut that's only after about 6months to a year to get to that point ether way love your videos can't wait for the update
Totally a long game, and I am looking forward to it
Love the longer content! Honestly wouldn’t mind if it was like a full episode each time you upload (30+ Min) about gardening!
I want to try more long complete project videos for sure! I just uploaded a 30 minute tomato cooking video with 3 recipes!
Loved this video, thank you, it reminded me when I started My Birdies raised beds in April of this year, I would have taken a lot of valuable info from this Video from you. I also tried logs and Unfinished compost at the bottom 😊
I've spent this year remodelling my growing spaces. I'm so excited for next years growing season.
You explain things so well. I was worried about you during the hurricane, I am happy to see you are doing well.
I like to use a large sheet of graph paper, and cut outs of the beds to move around because I like to do things manually.
That was my plan as well, but I am sure my husband, a retired engineer, will want to play with the Google system.
That's how we did it first actually but then I kept changing my mind and went to the old spreadsheet
I am going on the record to predict that your two test beds will perform basically the same. The reason I think this is because most garden vegetables won't really send their roots down deep enough to reach the hugelkultur portion of the mix. The top 15 inches or so is plenty of soil depth for most garden veg, the top 15 is the same soil and same amendment in both beds, so I suspect they will perform the same, as long as they are getting the same plants, light and water, and all other things are equal.
Agreed.
Agree, that overall at that height of soil it won't add much. If I cover crop with deep rooted plants and chop and drop maybe!
Funny you mention that, as I am currently growing diakon radish and sunflowers as the first cover crop in 2 of my newly-filled tall 8-in-1 Birdies Hugelkultur beds to start them out with deep-rooted chop and drop plants going into the fall/winter. I am trying to see if I can provide all the nutrition my plants in the new beds need using only my own compost, cover crops, Jadam liquid fertilizers that I make, and compost teas in these new beds using just what I have on my property for ingredients. Just trying to get away from organic meals like blood and bone to be more self-sufficient and save some coin if I can. Experimenting is half the fun!@@jacquesinthegarden
Beautiful new space! Think I may have to order some of those beds with such a great sale!!
Awesome new area, can't wait to see the plants in them!
Wonderful! I like concocting my own amendments too. Will look into pumice!
In my experience the hugelkultur bed may do worse in the first year or so due to settling and nitrogen lock up depending on how decayed the wood was. After that though I think it will do much better (better microbiome, insect habitat, fungal network, water retention etc) so don't be surprised if there's a big turn around after a season or two once it's established.
This makes a lot of sense, it will be interesting to see the growth over time.
This is basically what I am expecting long term!
Since my onions or garlic love nitrogen, I always put them in beds that had beans in them that fixed a ton of nitrogen into the soil and always get big fat garlic from the soil, easy way to get some nitrogen into the soil. Though I do add granular fertilizer every time I plant as well as I tend to plant a lot of crops that deplete the soil quite heavily in my gardens. Such as Garlic, Tomatoes, and etc.
Wow Jacques!! What great information! I've grown in raised beds for years, but mine are only 12' tall. The depth of the soil, however, is at least 2 feet. I'm quite sure you will love them I'm voting for the bed using Hugo culture method will be more productive over the long term, just because of the soil life that will be encouraged by the rotting wood. Love all your videos. From Missouri, zone 6b.
I am very excited to have this deep soil to a) reduce crouching all day and b) have fluffy soil to easily transplant out of or into!
Late is the season stores sell off their ripped bags of soil and mulch at discounts. I got 5 dozen bags at 90% off! Talk to the manager and get a deal!
I actually managed to get the bottom layer of a pallet of fox farms soil from my local dixieline 50% off due to this!
Amazing make over ❤ 👏 looking amazing! We also cant wait to see how much food will be grown there! Love those tall beds😊
Great information ❤ your garden. Can't wait to see the veggies in them bed.
Excellent video! I augmented all of my beds with some logs and branches to varying degrees. Will be interesting to see how much settling occurs over the years. This was year one for our new garden area.
The new area looks good! I am excited to see what will grow in those beds. I thoroughly enjoyed the planning phase of the new area. For the experiment beds, what are the parameters of the experiment? Are you planning to plant the exact same plants in each to examine the influence on growth or is it more about the soil condition in terms of life within the soil or is it a combination of things?
I will at least try to plan similar crops, it's hard to gauge for sure on the quality outcomes but It will be easy to track the settling and soil additions needed part of the experiment.
Looks good. I hope you show the irrigation setup.
I for sure plan to, I may try out a few different options to see what works best
The hugelkultur bed will do better in the long run because it has benefits for the soil life and keeps the moisture better in the soil. First it looks worse but will definitely win!
I love the planning, especially the spreadsheet, Jacques!
You can save some money by filling the raised beds halfway with dead logs. I did this with my metal beds that grow wildflowers and it has been a great success. CAUTION: Make sure the logs are dead! I made the mistake of filling a couple beds with freshly cut olive limbs and a few months later I had a mini olive forest growing!
Haha, I had the same issue with filling my raised bed with fresh raspberry cuttings. Lots of raspberries in my bed.
OMG! I had the same thing happen to mine! It's been a nightmare getting them all out over the past season.
Oh yeah! I did some jacaranda branches before and they definitely sprouted up!
I always enjoy your videos! Very educational, and inspiring. Looking forward to seeing them planted, and the results. Thanks!
I had you on speaker and my husband said...you did a spreadsheet and calculated everything too for the raised beds. I filled my beds with 1/2 to 3/4 mushroom compost blend and the rest with Mels mix which is expensive but my plants thrive. I also use azomite. I let two beds settle before planting for months but they teally dropped using branches etc.
That's awesome, I haven't messed with mushroom compost much yet but it seems great. I would guess that it is very airy and probably settles quite a bit.
Appreciate you walking us through ever step!
I did not know about the bulk soil problem. Explains why my veggies were miserable this year. I put in 4 birdies beds last year and just bought another 6.
It can be hard to find out the right information sometimes, glad to point you the right direction
It really depends on where you get your soil. The people that sell it here in Las Vegas has about 30% compost as part of the mix.
The place I use makes their soil mixes and the soil I used to get was a 40% mix of mushroom compost, never had any issues with that. But the mushroom farm they sourced from closed down and now the soil only has a little mushroom. The last batch of soil I got was full mustard seed and I had it coming up everywhere. The veggie beds really suffered this year. @@lvthunder
Wow, thanks. I especially loved your process for amending the soil.
Glad it was helpful!
Start to finish. Excellent tutorial
look forward to the new beds production out put
So excited for this series! Please keep us update
you could look into free CADD software for architecture/engineer to do the garden layout. I have done it that way for my 65 ft by 50 ft garden area and even planned it around a 18x24 greenhouse.
That would definitely make things more exact and organized, I wanted to do something basic and quick for others
This video is incredibly helpful and I really appreciate your thorough but succinct explanation
It looks great!
Loved this! Lots of great info. Thank you
Wow i love the idea on how you minimize your garden... and it's Tranquil scenery...😍
Great video, thanks for all the info. I learned a lot.
That is not a show shovel. It's a transfer shovel or a coal shovel. It is not great for snow but would work ok. Snow shovels are more flat or curled and wider for pushing not digging/scooping.
Goes to show I truly have no idea how snow shovels look 😂
Thank you! Well needed video for me!
Looks beautiful.
Thank you so much. This was awesome 💕😁👍
Love it!
Solid video thanks Jacques
My prediction is the raised bed will do great but overtime the Hugel bed will out perform the raised bed. Nice experiment. Great beds!!
I think that's basically the outcome we will see
Hope you position beds so you can walk around them. I made a huge mistake putting a huge resided bed into a corner. I cannot even reach the center so now we need to move this bed out so we can walk around. In the spring we put in about 15 raised beds. We use the method filling the bottom with logs, brush and cuttings.
I gave myself a good 2 feet around either side, a little less against the wall at 20" I am hoping this will work out well enough for me!
pumice is king switched 8 years ago to using it haven't bought perlite since. The bed with the wood in it might not be as good year 1 but come year 2 - 3 it will dominate.
you might want to have some kind of shut off system throughout your watering system. 😊 i think that would help in the future, but I'm new to this growing things. but I'm loving the wonderful information and experience along with the incurragement to try it our selves to see what works for each of us individual. 😊thank you.❤
These pvc pipes are connected back to a controller that allows me to turn the water on or off remotely! So the pipes are never pressurized with water when not in use.
You're going to love those new beds. We only have 3, 4W x 8L x 1D raised beds, (the
rest is inground and 10gal buckets) but using sqft planting it's amazing the amount
of veg you can produce.
Unrelated topic. I've got 4 beautiful Pusa Jwala hot pepper plants growing and loaded with peppers. But, they are turning black instead of red. Any ideas? TY
I feel like some peppers turn blackish before turning to their final color. Is it rotten and squishy, if so it could be blossom end rot stress due to inconsistent watering.
@@jacquesinthegarden They are not soft,
and on closer inspection it appears to be
a very dark purple to black strip down the
length of the peppers on the side facing
the sun. We've plucked all the new blossoms from the plants and topped all
plant stems above existing peppers. Time
will tell if that helps. We also intend to try
and winter over a couple of these plants.
Hey Your knowledge is showing😁😁
Nice Video! I really enjoy watching the content
This year we started our first vegetable garden
we do parmaculture, no dig and lazy gardening
but we put quite a lot of work in to making the beds
for the soil we tried to make terra preta and mixed charcoal, rock flour and horn shavings into each wheelbarrel of soil
(charcoal -> big surface area for microbes to attach, rock flour -> minerals, horn shavings -> long time ferilizer)
works way better till now than we expected
We live in germany and i found a a company in austria that makes terra preta. in their youtube channel they go very deep into the science and data. They say once you set up your soil the right way, keep it covered all the time you don t even need any extra fertilizer
In nature we don t have anyone fertilizing by hand the microbes and fungi should be able to do the work
lets see how well its works in the coming seasons
The terra preta idea is very interesting, all the amendments you mentioned make total sense as well!
I've filled all my raised beds hugelkultur style. After the first year, the deep-rooted plants take way less water once they're well established, even during drought. There's definitely a lot of settling every year though. I'll be curious to see what you think at the end of the experiment.
That's very interesting and totally makes sense
Love your graphics
very curious about this test!
When placing a 32 inch high raised bed it MUST be PERFECTLY level. I have three I have had to empty twice due to weight shifting causing the bottoms to buckle. I will be reinforcing the sides with conduit driven into the dirt.
Interesting, I guess since they are placed on soil it shouldn't matter as much but this does make sense.
Jaque How many months you had those beds for? And you finally set them up😅 thank you for your videos they have helped me soo much with battling Ansiety and Depression 😢
So so many months 😂, Kevin kept hassling me asking when I would actually do something with them! I'm glad to hear you enjoy my videos and that they help bring you some calm and joy!
@@jacquesinthegarden you have no Idea how much you have helped me, you and Kevin, Actually I have a Gift for you, Hopefully I can drive to you and give it to you, I'm near Anaheim
I was wondering why you decided to buy all that soil instead of filling them 1/2 way with the compost from the local San Diego Greenery. Seems to me that it would work very similar to the wood fill method, and just put the bought soil into the top 18". I'm just curious as I'm also getting ready to build a number of raised beds. Thank you so much for this detailed video, so much great information!
The problem with using too much compost is that it doesn't let the water drain trough. The logs will still allow air in and since they are large pieces water can still move through them. If you put a layer of pure compost it would be like placing a bunch of towels at the bottom, the water would never drain fully. This will lead to lack of oxygen and the soggy layer will likely degrade the beds faster by sitting extremely wet against the surface. If you added in 1/3 perlite, pumice, or even coarse woody material it would be better but I like having the drainage .
Jacque, what are the vertical metal supports screwed to the sides of some of your beds? Is that a new feature on the birdies beds y'all sell, and are they on every model? Or is that something custom you added? (For example, look at the bed at exactly 14:10 in the video...the vertical metal support right next to your PVC.) I ask because some of my "old style" birdies beds are sagging a bit, even though I used the "old style" bracing kits that run horizontally across the entire bed (and are not the easiest thing on the planet to install, frankly). Thanks. PS your garden looks great.
This is a new test I am running actually, not fully proven yet but hoping it will make things better overall! Agreed on the ease of install not being that easy with the threaded rod.
Awesome. Good luck and thank you for the always-helpful videos.@@jacquesinthegarden
I loved your growing in the ground. 😢
Do not worry, 90% of the garden is still in ground, I love in ground gardening too much to give that up.
All the different amendments to the soil ! Wow . Could some of them be applied to a house plant potting mix
Most houseplants wouldn't need much of these amendments, I can see the rock dust being valuable but otherwise house plants are troopers!
Will you do one on how you set it up from your water supply to the pipes
For sure, I will do a raised bed irrigation options video.
I just ordered a Birdies bed and plan on the 2ft by 5ish foot configuration. I don’t have any dead logs but I will have a ton of mulched dry leaves this fall. Can I mix the leaves, used coffee grounds and some soil together and let that decompose over the winter? My last raised bed I used a majority of city compost (I sifted out the wood chips and put them in the bottom of the bed) and I don’t think my tomatoes cared for it . I think there was a lot of weed / grass killer in the city compost as the tomato leaves were continuously wildly curled until recently. I do have some homemade compost from last falls leaves, but darn that stuff diminishes in volume as it composts! I’ll be upping my compost game this year.
You for sure can just dump in whatever you have on hand with soil and let it slowly decompose over winter! If you still have a month or two before it all freezes plant a quick growing cover crop like buckwheat and it will winter kill and build the soil even better.
@@jacquesinthegarden Thank you! My bed was delivered today! I’ll look for some buckwheat!
Loved watching the setup! Will you be making a video about how you finish the irrigation? I'm newly setting up my garden and would like to add irrigation :)
Just bought a bed 🙏😊
A spreadsheet! Wow, I didn’t think to do it that way. I sketch everything out.🙄
What do you think you’ll plant in the experiment beds? I’m excited to see the results!
I will likely fill both with a mix of cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and some fall flowers like calendula or pansy
Might want to wear a mask when working with Azomite and Perlite.
I went with pumice (which was also wet) to avoid any particulates off the bat. Agreed the fine rock dust is really something I shouldn't be breathing in.
Looks so good! 😍 You should drop a before and after photo. Do you compost? I’ve been wanting to but I’m unsure about it with such a small yard to work with. Mostly nervous about lil critters
You can try in-place composting. As long as your food scraps, etc are covered with soil, you shouldn’t have to worry about smells and attracting vermin. Place about 3”-6” of potting soil on top of everything and plant your seeds/seedlings in that. Your compost will feed the plants as they and your compost develop.
There are plenty of examples at this channel, “Robbie and Gary Gardening Easy,” but this is probably her most focused video about it:
th-cam.com/video/ieHavm7GHzw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=JRQsPWWSkXNbJ3jx
I do compost! If you are really on top of building it perfect and turning it then critters are not a major issue. If you do it sort of randomly and let it sit for long periods you might attract rodents! When it works though it is fantastic, I have about half a cubic yards worth to spread throughout the rest of the season.
@@jacquesinthegarden great advice! Thank you 🥰
As soon as these beds are available in Europe, they're MINE
Haha, hopefully they can get there in the next few years!
LOL! Nice work.
An easier method… eyeball it, order some beds, put them together and place them empty in your yard, then use a tape measure to evenly space them.
That is basically what I did the first time I took a look at the space but I wanted to show others how to do it in a more "proper" way haha
I'm thinking straight soil will do better. It will be interesting to see the results.
Hello always loved your videos! Any change I could get the old soil bed, you wont use anymore? Thanks, also special thanks from you and everyone from Epic gardening, what you are teaching us and helping to becoma better gardeners! Big Like
I actually gave it to my neighbor who wanted to start building up their garden! I appreciate the kind words, glad to help teach others
The logs in the bed will assist to keep your bed from bending inwards.
Interesting, I've theorized that it actually causes beds to pull in more as the soil caves in dur to logs collapsing.
Green Oasis.
I filled the bottom of a raised bed with logs, branches and wood chips. Unfortunately this introduced a lot of earwigs and other pests to the bed. Saved a few dollars on soil but would not repeat.
I can see that being an issue, those guys absolutely love woody materials
I get great org compost soil for 62 a yard Zone 9a ✌🏻🙏🏻👍🏻🇺🇸 Azomite is must for every garden it has Brawndo it has what plants need 😂
Absolutely what plants crave!