Raised Beds

[cdg]

Howdy . I live in north central Texas . Mainly , I like growing heirloom tomatoes , with a few squash plants and pepper plants . This year all tomatoes and peppers drowned due to heavy clay soil and poor drainage of my lot . O.K. Now for my questions . I am in the process of gathering material and planning for raised beds next year . Question one , would 3 foot wide be enough for tomatoes planted in a zig zag pattern . Question two , I have purchased 2x10 yellow pine to build the beds . These are 9 1/4 inches wide . Do you think that is tall enough for tomatoes ( I can add a cap if necessary ) . They will be open bottom beds on existing soil . Question three , wondering how long untreated yellow pine will last in contact with soil . Fill is so expensive is why I am going for minimum size that might work successfully .
Thanks in advance for anyone experienced with raised beds that feel like sharing your opinions .
CDGTXS

[SQWIBB]

Question one , would 3 foot wide be enough for tomatoes planted in a zig zag pattern .

YES


Question two , I have purchased 2x10 yellow pine to build the beds . These are 9 1/4 inches wide . Do you think that is tall enough for tomatoes ( I can add a cap if necessary ) . They will be open bottom beds on existing soil .

YES But chop up and amend the soil below the beds.


Question three , wondering how long untreated yellow pine will last in contact with soil . Fill is so expensive is why I am going for minimum size that might work successfully .


Ok this one is going to be a long one.
My personal opinion would be to use Pressure treated wood and to go two boards high and cap. This would be 20" high when completed.
I would build the beds now, put in place and start filling the beds with woodsy material following a hugelkultur / sheet mulch / lasagna method.
This would fill up the bed at almost no cost.


Build the beds, dig out about 6-10" of soil, lay in your woodsy material like logs, then twigs and sticks, add back some of the native clay soil in a thin layer, add stuff like leaves, old potting mix, cardboard like pizza boxes, compost, other yard waste alternating with your native soil.
The last 4" or so, use a good soil mix like peat, black kow, cheapo potting mix, perlite.

If you get the beds filled early enough, you can grow an oat and crimson clover cover crop.


About a month before you are ready to plant, cover the cover crop in cardboard, top with some compost/black kow/potting mix.
At Planting time, if the cardboard has not been consumed, pop a hole in the cardboard and plant right in the hole.

Do not put woodchips in the bed as fill, however you could use pine bark mulch/nuggets.
Woodchips are OK for a mulch.

If you are interested, I can post some pics of how my beds are done.

[cdg]

I would appreciate photos if not too much trouble . When you talk of laying logs in the bed , what diameter would you consider too large . I appreciate your reply . Exactly the kind of info I was hunting . THANKS Again .Cdgtxs.

[SQWIBB]

The bigger the better for the base layer, rotted wood is the best especially if it has fungi on it.


I also feel it is very important to utilize your native soil for these beds.



If you do this method, make sure to wet down every layer.



Here are a few beds in hugelkultur, I'll post the build pics if you are interested in them as well.






This is my first hugelkultur that I built over a stump that was impossible to remove.

Some on line sources say it's better to have the wood upright as it wicks water better, personally I just toss everything in however it fits easier.







Bed 2

My brother and I built this one for my mom and dad.
This one we really went deep with the wood.

Another bed

I compost directly in these beds throughout the year. But mostly during the non-growing season.


In situ composting in the winterThe ground has been frozen for a few weeks, so when the weather got up to the high 40's for a few days, I needed to get my compost in before the ground froze again.

[SQWIBB]

I cover crop at the end of the season.

For my parents bed, I cover the bed in cardboard and will mulch this in the late winter, sometimes I'll mulch right away when I put down the cardboard. For some odd reason my mom gets all uptight unless the bed is all pretty, so I gave up on any type of cover crop and just toss down cardboard.

Bed stained and lighting installed

beds during the growing season

[cdg]

Thanks for photos . This hügelkultur is something I have never heard of . are the logs for drainage or cheap filler . All I have access to are oak and mesquite in this area . Wonder if that would work . Also , I have nearly unlimited wood chips at out landfill . Is there any use for these in filling the bed . I use them for mulch in my present walking paths .
Thanks much .

[SQWIBB]

That wood is fine.
The wood in a hugelkultur has many purposes. Holds and releases water when needed, habitat for beneficial soil microbes and insects. Self fertilizing, Cheap fill.
If you use wood chips they may tie up nitrogen. You could probably use some of they have been aged and started breaking down.
You can try mixing the wood chips with your native soil just above the heavier wood.
I have mixed wood chips in the soil in my 2nd bed and didn't notice any issues, however, the general consensus is that it will tie up nitrogen until it starts to break down.
Bear in mind that the fresher the wood you use, the more nitrogen will be tied up.
I did not have this issue with much of the wood that I used that was not seasoned but wanted to point out the possibility that it can tie up nitrogen.
Another thing with mentioning is that the hugelkultur beds get better over time, the research that I have done say that your 3rd year is when the hugelkultur beds start really performing.

[xellos99]

Im not saying anyones method is wrong but I go about it like this.

You lay out a bunch of your clay soil in a big pile, I use builders plastic sheeting so it makes less mess.

Then I add buckets of sand and stuff called Perlite and use a shovel to mix it up.

Do that until it looks and feels a much sandier consistency and speckled evenly with perlite bits.

Now you should have much better drainage and faster drying time.

But the taller the beds the better and if possible dig below the bed and replace with the new soil mix also so the water has more fast drainage room.

I also mix concentrated chicken manure pellets into it because the sand and perlite have no nutrition in it.

[SQWIBB]

Clay soil need humus. I wouldn't add sand.
Add organic matter to the clay soil.
Perlite will definitely help also, but the main thing is getting them tiny clay particles Into larger aggregates.
I think it's called flocculation?

[jtjmartin]

Everyone does it differently - probably depending on what they have available. We have very heavy dense clay in Virginia and my property started with a lot of woods. CLAY + A TON of WOOD = perfect HUGELKULTURE!

+ I'm cheap so I like not having to spend a boat load of money. Some of my beds are made of two deep landscape ties, some are sloped with no borders, and the deepest beds (8") are made with wood from an old pier.

I've said a thousand times this year that if I didn't have raised beds - then my garden would be under water. OTOH, we leave for 10 days and I know that I will not need anyone to water because all that wood in the bottom of the hugel bed is soaked.

You can always try several different styles and see what works.

Jeff

[wildcat62]

I had never heard of a Hügelkultur, but have used rotting wood in grows for years. Very interesting...

[bower]

Another perspective from the north. I have clay soil here too, which in its native state has a pH of 4 (super acidic) and very unfriendly to crops. Raised beds work great for me, and they don't have to be very deep if you use compost to fill them up. Depending on the soil condition below, even 6-8 inches is enough to support most crops quite happily and ensure that they are draining well. I don't have any beds taller than 12 inches afaict. Garlic - which is probably the fussiest about being well drained - puts its roots down below the beds raised level. As long as the top is good, the subsoil seems to be tolerated.

I use untreated plank or board - scrap wood for the most part - and they last a long time. It is not pine just the standard lumber, probably douglas fir. At my mother's place, we are taking apart and replacing the raised beds this year, which lasted at least 15 years. No treatment at all. The end pieces are now rotten, but the long pieces are still pretty good. They weather to a grey color and that's it. Not a fancy look, but no chemicals leaching into my veggie ground, which I prefer.

When the wood in my garden is too rotten to keep a bed together, I use it to frame out a compost pile. Let it rot eh.

[b54red]

I have been using raised beds for over 35 years now. For the first 34 years the beds were made of 2X8 treated pine and were just replaced this year with 2X10 treated pine. If you have the room I would make the bed slightly less than 4 feet across and as long as you need. I have one bed that is 40 feet long and my shortest one is only 15 feet long. When I rebuilt the beds I used 4 ft lengths for the ends and screwed them together with 3" deck screws with the the long sides butted to the 4' end pieces.. This leaves me with beds about 44 inches wide which works great for me but a little narrower would be find but I don't think I would go as narrow as three feet unless I had to. It is nice to have enough room between the beds to easily move a wheelbarrow so filling and working the beds is much easier. With the long sides butted to the 4' end pieces. I used 1X6 two feet long to join the sides as I put it together and used 1 1/2" deck screws to fasten them together. I then used 2' long pieces of 3/4" galvanized conduit every 5 or 6 feet driven in next to the boards on the outside to keep it straight and held tight with a simple U strap or what is called a 3/4" two hole strap. This bracing is more and more critical over time as the boards try to warp and move with the constant wetting and drying that goes on.

Or house sits on a high clay knob and the clay is very dense. Before I buillt the raised beds I had all the topsoil in my garden which wasn't much wash off during a period of especially heavy rain. I filled my beds with what topsoil I had and mushroom compost and added pine bark fines, compost of my own, and lots of peat. At the beginning of every season I add cottonseed meal, alfalfa pellets, any compost I have, some chicken manure and a slight amount of fertilizer to aid in not losing nitrogen as the alfalfa breaks down and work that into the top 4 inches. I wet it down good and cover it with a heavy layer of cypress mulch and then plant in a few days or weeks. The cypress mulch is removed each season to work the beds up and then replaced. Some of the mulch always breaks down and is worked into the beds so that by using the mulch I am constantly adding organic matter to the soil. The cottonseed meal attracts earth worms like crazy and after a few years I always have a layer of worm castings just below the mulch at the end of each season which is a real plus.

In one bed I made the mistake of tilling some of the clay up into the bed and for years that bed would turn into a brick every summer and every dry spell. And when it wasn't a brick it was so dense and heavy that drainage was poor so I would advise you to dig out a bit more below your beds if it is heavy clay. It is better to start off with the bed a little low than to fill it with something that will cause problems like the clay did for me. I ended up having to remove over half the soil from that bed to get it to the point that it was decent for planting. It isn't critical to fill the beds to the top immediately, you can add peat, compost and pine bark fines every season to gradually get them near the top in a year or two.

Bill

[bower]

@ taboule, your raised beds are deluxe! 2X10 is a very nice depth to have, really ideal.


My perennial garden beds which I built 25 years ago are raised clay with rock instead of board. I have to agree with Bill, you are better off not to dig any clay up into your vegetable beds. After a lot of amendments over the years, those clay beds are still clay. The deep rooted perennials are fine there, but forget about planting a few vegetables in the bare spots. Believe me, I've tried.
The way I have built my vegetable beds, there is usually some vegetation where you want to put the bed, grass or whatever (I have dug out some gnarly weeds) and then lay cardboard under your wooden frame before filling with soil. This kills the vegetation below and once it all rots it will create some organic subsoil below your bed without having to dig out clay (unless you decide to go hugel, which is very cool too). Anyway, the cardboard is easy to do, and even with 2X6 or a little more it is deep enough for garlic, squash or any vegetable I've tried. My shallot bed is new last year and is really on the shallow end at about 5 inches. The shallots rooted right down through the cardboard and made it through a winter of soaking then freezing repeatedly. You can see how much shallower it is than the clay beds where a vegetable won't grow.(I do want to make this one deeper though.)

[jtjmartin]

Originally Posted by wildcat62

I had never heard of a Hügelkultur, but have used rotting wood in grows for years. Very interesting...

I had not until I read about it a few years ago. It really works well in eastern Virginia where we don’t have much topsoil but a lot of heavy clay that is either wet or baked hard.