Creating a Raised Garden Bed on Any Budget
Depending on the materials you have or can gather, you can create a raised garden for little cost other than your time and labor. Otherwise, there are kits that you can buy. If you don’t want to scrounge materials but buying a kit isn’t in your budget, you can purchase high-quality lumber that is rot-resistant, such as cedar, and build your own beds.
If you have access to some of the materials needed, you can substantially reduce your costs. We got the cedar planks for the walls at a local sawmill. While buying some pine boards for our fence, I noticed a pile of wood that was in a “discard pile”. Some of the pieces were the outer cuts from cedar logs and the owner kindly allowed us to take some at no cost. These were flat on one side and, after removing the bark, were ideal for the raised bed’s walls.
Living on a country property, we were able to get dead cedar trees to use as our four posts. We also gathered enough topsoil and sand from our property. To this, we added compost and leaves. We even found the remnants of an old manure pile (courtesy of horses we had years ago), which made a great addition to the raised bed. In all, we carted about 20 wheelbarrows of material, mostly soil, to our new garden. Besides our time and labor, this project cost us only the price of 64 galvanized screws!