have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

We have more than a little bunny problem in our yard so I'm thinking that building raised beds is the way to go for my veggie growing endeavors this year.

if you've built/made one before, what materials did you use and how big were the beds? i'm leaning twds cedar instead of the recycled lumber, but not sure what dimensions would work best.

thanks for any advice and/or ideas you have!

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

This summer I bought a kit and my FIL built the raised bed for me, unfortunately this winter my cat has been using it as a toilet. I digress, it was easy to put together and in my case, as I only wanted to build one, it was cheaper than buying the timber and cutting it ourselves.

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

I'm interested in this as well. If anyone has pictures and directions, it would be appreciated!

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

We have raised bed, but just 6" high, so not enough to keep the bunnies out. Maybe at our next house, I'll do 12" up (then you can plant carrots and other root veggies).


DH made them for me out of 2x6s. We have one that is 4x8 and two that are 2x4 and it yields alot of veggies!

For the bunnies, I put a garden stake at each corner and wrap a mesh garden fence around it once tomatoes start emerging...otherwise they don't bother it much. It stinks to have to roll it up for any stray weeds (if you put garden fabric down, there isn't too much weeding needed) and harvesting.

this is before the fence went up:


we had pumpkin takeover - this is from one of the smaller ones:

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

we just did this in our yard this passed spring. we have like an acre of property and part of it is a hill, so we turned the hill into raised planting beds. Dh just used pressure treated wood- apparently the new stuff they use is ok to be near vegetable plants and stuff. i remember he made sure to get "ground contact" wood, since its obviously in the ground- its made to be better sitting near dirt, etc. Here's some pics

Message edited 12/30/2009 3:38:49 PM.

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

yes, we have raised beds we built 4 years ago, they are cedar. The pics were taken at different times over the years.






I higly recommend this system and the book
the square foot gardener

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?

We had our first raised vegetable garden this past summer, and it worked out great. DH actually just used a part of the wooden framework from a deck around our pool that was torn down. He built the small fence around it as well, and we had no problems with bunnies or any other critters getting into the garden. The first picture is when we first started the garden, and you can see what the raised bed looks like. The second picture shows what our garden looked like by the end of the summer. We grew tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and cucumbers with full sun on the garden for most of the day.

Good luck!

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Message edited 12/30/2009 10:36:56 PM.

Re: have any of you built raised vegetable beds before?