Building Raised Garden Beds for Simple Urban Gardening

Building raised garden beds to create a simple urban gardening experience has been worth the joy and challenges to grow our own food!

This was really our attempt to learn the process of gardening in an urban setting in the most simple way. After all, this was my very first garden ever! It was truly delightful to cultivate our own produce and bring it into the kitchen to enjoy with our meals. That was something I dreamed of for a very long time. What an incredible skill to learn to grow your own food!

raised garden beds and small cottage in urban setting

BUILDING RAISED GARDEN BEDS

I always dreamed of having my very own little garden one day. Especially if we were to buy a home. So when we bought our first house, this tiny little fixer upper, I knew that I had to make this dream a reality. And that required Nate’s help to build me a few garden beds to start out with and learn about gardening.

I asked Nate to build me two 4×8 and two 4×4 raised garden beds to start off with and practice. If you want to start more simply, you could just build one garden bed at a time and then expand from there.

My plan was to grow veggies and fruit in the two 4×8 beds. And then use one 4×4 to grow pollinators like flowers and the other 4×4 to grow herbs.

It was really great to get Nate’s help because in all reality~ I was taking him away from work on the house. I was so thankful and excited to dedicate my time to try my hand at a bit of urban gardening and homesteading. While he worked on renovating our house, I could be in the garden learning how to grow food for us. A skill I think we should all at some point learn a bit about.

Since he loves to build things and work with wood, I could tell he was excited to do something different away from the house. I was happy to see that he was also enjoying himself while he was building me those beds!

Materials & Tools We Used

Circular Saw: This saw was used to cut the wood for the raised beds.
Ruler: This was used to measure out the wood and to cut perfect squares from them.
Tape Measure: This can be used for many things really. We used it to measure out each foot for our square foot gardening plan in the raised beds.
Garden Twine: This was used to make square boxes in our raised beds. We tied the twine around nails that were measured one foot apart. This is a natural twine that can be used for temporary use. I only used a square foot garden to start so it worked out fine.
Bio-tone Starter: This organic product was recommended to me by many people I met in a local garden store to plant my seedlings in our raised beds.

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HANDMADE SEEDLING TRAYS

Ever wonder what to do with toilet paper rolls instead of just throwing them in the trash? I actually turned them into a crafting project to help me get some seedlings ready for the garden beds.

woman crafting with toilet paper rolls to make seedling trays

Since we were on a budget, I did my best to be creative instead of spending a lot of money on gardening tools and things.

seedling trays made from toilet paper rolls

I turned these rolls into individual seedling trays and then would compost them after the seedlings were planted in the garden.

GARDEN SOIL DELIVERED

We had a local company deliver compost for our raised beds as we don’t have a truck to pick it up ourselves. They delivered 3 cubic yards as we calculated that would work for the two 4×8 and two 4×4 beds we had. And well, that was the minimum they would deliver anyway!

It looked and smelled so good. Yay~ it was so exciting to have our soil delivered!

I heard from other gardeners to put cardboard down on the grass and then place your soil on top. This essentially kills the grass and gives you a nice surface to build your garden beds. But then I took it a step further!

raised garden beds with cardboard at the bottom

For several months, I saved all our food scraps to add to the garden and be food for our new wonderful soil. The problem was that it was really gross and stinky. I’m sure there could’ve been a better way to do this, but I just wanted to get it done as quick as possible. Using a shovel though seemed to work a lot better than only using my hands. Yuck~ I felt like vomiting the entire time I was placing it in the garden beds. Gross!

raised garden beds with cardboard at the bottom and food scraps

It was a lot of work filling up these garden beds with soil. But, it turned out so good. Even though you could see the cardboard underneath it showing through, it composted back into the ground over time.

man dumping garden soil in raised garden beds with a wheelbarrow

We also saved a bunch of leaves and decided to place them on top of the soil to act as a covering. Kinda like with my worm bin. Later we ended up just using wood chips. Either way, both are great food and fertilizer for all the living things in the soil.

woman placing leaves on top of garden bed soil with a pitch fork

SIMPLE URBAN GARDENING – SQUARE FOOT METHOD

I did a lot of research on the type of gardening I wanted to try out. It was overwhelming as there are so many ways and methods to get started. As a beginner gardener, who has literally never done this before, the square foot gardening method seemed to appeal to me the most.

It seemed easy enough to mark off squares in the garden bed. And then calculate how many seeds or seedlings to plant in each square depending on the type of produce. So, for our 4×8 bed, we made 32 square boxes and 16 for our 4×4 bed.

man measuring garden bed and marking off a square foot garden

Nate made the squares for me by hammering a nail (but not all the way through) every foot around the garden beds. Then he tied the twine around the nails to create squares throughout the whole garden bed.

man using twine to create a square foot garden

Consider the Twine

One thing to keep in mind if you also decide to have a square foot garden, is the kind of twine you use. The one we used didn’t last us that long and we had to replace it. And actually, after a while when I got the hang of gardening, I didn’t need to rely on the squares as much anymore.

If you are also dreaming of having a garden one day to grow your own food, care for the local pollinators, and learn an essential skill~ I hope you start one! It can be even more simple than how we started. You could build one raised garden bed or even use grow bags to start. Whatever it takes~ I encourage you to just start! You won’t regret it.

CHECK OUT OUR VIDEOS

Thanks for joining us on this journey! We hope that you will find inspiration watching us learn as we go while we’re attempting to renovate and rebuild this old small historic cottage mostly on our own~ while working full time jobs! Stay tuned for more progress updates ahead. Read more about us here.

You can also watch a video about this here.