There’s no doubt raised beds have a significant place in northern gardening. If you’re thinking about building raised beds this year, we’ve got a couple of articles for you! Brand new for 2023, we finally documented how we built our raised beds! This will be a three-part series, covering everything from two different types of raised bed building materials, plus building the soil you put into your raised beds!
First, we’ll cover our “primary” growing beds, the ones where we grow a ton of food intensively. Building raised beds isn’t particularly difficult, construction-wise. You can just slap some wood together in rectangles and you’re good to go. But, they’re better if you integrate some thinking into them.
One of the main topics we cover is the concept we call “defensive design.” There are two major threats to raised bed gardens, the environment and predators. We cover both of them! In this article, we discuss the various techniques we used to protect our beds from moose, rabbits and voles, all of which can devastate the northern garden. Also, we discuss how we protected our lumber using a somewhat creative technique, rather than using pressure treated wood. While we do think pressure treated wood is a fine choice, even for food based gardens these days, we think our method is even better at protection! Additionally, we throw in some of our “strengthening” techniques that will help your beds last a long time.
This is a bit of a “build guide” kind of post. We’re not necessarily informing you of the specifics of our exact raised beds, since everyone’s build will be a bit different. Instead, we talk about the construction techniques, materials and general thinking we used to build our growing system. If you’re looking for techniques that can get you many, many years out of your beds, don’t miss this article!
Also, don’t forget, we’ve got our livestream coming up tomorrow! We’d love to chat with you and are really getting excited! Link to the livestream in the comments.
Building Raised Beds Suitable For Subarctic Climates & Garden Threats
