I’ve had my raised bed garden for three years now and it was beautiful. My kids made me the beds for Mother’s Day with wood from our local sawmill. Well, they literally fell apart earlier this year so I had to come up with something else. I knew wood beds here in Florida wouldn’t last more than three years and that’s about the time it took for the boards to start popping off. I’m excited to share with you the benefits of raised beds and what I’m using now in my garden. Wait until you see them!
Benefits of Raised Beds
- First of all, raised beds are so pretty sitting in your garden area. They keep your space uniform.
- The second benefit of raised beds is you have minimal weeds. With the back to Eden method, you will layer tree limbs, tree mulch, compost, etc. which decreases the weeds. I kid you not. I hardly ever have weeds in my garden. What I did have is grass popping up through my old fabric underneath. I’ll talk more on that later.
- It’s easier to harvest your vegetables as you don’t have to bend over so far. That really helps at any age haha. My wood beds were 18 inches high and I loved them. My new beds are 15” and 29” tall. They are perfect for both root and above ground crops.
Read This Post: Why I Switched to Raised Beds
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How We Re-Did Our Garden
So, we ending up taking everything out of the garden and basically started over. All we left was the chicken coop, of course haha, and the greenhouse. I had my son come and get in the Kubota and remove all the beds and scrape it down to the dirt.
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We then used 15 foot rolls of a heavy duty erosion fabric. We are in construction so this stuff is readily available to us. I did use this 30 year warranty weed fabric on the perimeter but never finished. Nothing ever popped up through it but since my garden is 6,000 sq. ft., it just made sense to use the bigger roll.
After we got the fabric layer down, we then started putting the new beds together. I’ll share more about these amazing new beds below. I bit the bullet and ordered 18 beds. With a space as large as ours, I needed them haha.
TIP: I highly recommend weed fabric of some kind. It will drive you crazy having to pull all the weeds all the time. Getting a 20-30 warranty really does make a difference. If you are able to, scrape down whatever is in the space down to the dirt and then place the fabric on top.
My New Raised Beds
I’ve been searching earlier this year for an alternative to my wood beds. Like I said earlier, it’s hard to keep them here in Florida because of all the rain we get here. I truly love the look of a cottage garden with wood beds and pea gravel lined between each box. I just had to come to terms with myself and say, no. I need function and pretty but I’m also getting older, so I need something that is going to last and be easy on my back.
After watching a YouTube video with my favorite country singer, Carrie Underwood, I decided to order the beds she bought. Kevin and his crew from Epic Gardening, went to her farm and re-did her greenhouse garden. It looked amazing!
So, as I stated earlier, I ordered 18 beds. Yeah, that might be a little obsessive, but I really need them to fill the space in our garden. I never even realized how big it was so we decided to measure this time haha. The clothesline is in my garden too, so I needed to make sure my beds could function around my clothesline. I didn’t want my sheets flapping in the wind and hitting the corn.
Here’s What I Bought
Epic Gardening carries metal raised beds call “Birdies”. The selling point for me was the fact that they have a 20 + year warranty thanks to their high-performance aluzinc steel design. They are 100% Food-Safe: Aluzinc steel, USDA-approved paint, and stainless steel hardware keep your soil safe.
Here’s Why You Will Love Them To:
- 7x More Corrosion and Rust-resistant than regular galvanized steel. Their 24-gauge cold-rolled aluzinc galvanized steel is ultra-strong and lightweight.
- Simple, Customizable Design with square foot dimensions to make garden planning easy.
- 100% Food-Safe Materials to ensure safe and healthy soil for food production.
- Reinforced Bracing Kit for Medium and Large beds, with additional support to keep beds upright.
- Easy to Assemble – You will need four hands to assemble these beds. It’s definitely not a one person job. It took us 20-30 minutes to build each bed, depending on the size.
So, I bought (8) of the 8×4 15” high beds, (4) of the 4×2 15” high beds, (4) of the 8×4 29” high beds and (2) of the round tall 29” beds. Those measure 38” in diameter. The best thing is you can build them however size you like. They come with panels and then you can create your different sizes. It’s pretty cool. I just kept mine more of traditional sizes but have fun with them.
Epic Gardening is constantly having sales on their raised beds. When I bought mine, I got 4 of them for free. That was real exciting for me! I decided to partner with Epic Gardening because I truly love their quality and they have amazing content on their website. They were kind enough to give me a code to share with ya’ll. You can even stack my code when there is something on sale. So generous, right?
Discount Code: enter lhsimpleliving at checkout
Click HERE to go straight to Epic Gardening’s website.
Tools You May Need
Drip Tape Valves
Organic Compost
Wood Chips
Cardboard or Tree Limbs
As always, tag me over on Instagram if you end up getting you a few of these awesome garden beds. I love seeing things ya’ll make of mine or products I truly love. Here’s to low maintenance, sturdiness and easy on the back! Happy Gardening friend!
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