Sunlight has been striking our planet with a spectrum of light for a very long time. We all have had the pleasure of eating food, the first and foremost solar power we have benefited from. Farmers across the world use it everyday.
So today I built another raised bed garden to harvest more home-grown organic food. Not only was it easy to build, but I know what will be going into my food and my body when I eat it.
I made mine out of cedar, 1x2s, 2x8s, 4x4, 4 copper caps, some screws. Buying the material took longer than constructing it.
Corners:
The corner consists of 1x2s screwed into the 4x4 corner with the 1x8s inserted into the slot created. I anchor the 1x8 into the 1x2 from the inside with another screw.
Sides:
The next board just slides on top of the first, there's no magic or perfect dimensions as it can vary, but a manageable size for leaning over to plant and harvest is about 3 to 4 feet in width and 8 feet long. This keeps the cutting down to a minimum.
Finished box:
Filling the box with some left over tomato stems from last fall, other compost in the bottom and miscellaneous dirt from a landscaping project, some peat moss. This box needs a little less than two cubic yards for fill.
A shot of all three of our boxes:
The one in the middle has a 1 x 2 trellis to hold the tomatos up, which was an addition the second year as my tomato plants were getting 7 feet tall. We use harvested rainwater to water the beds, compost for fertilizer and a little bit of time and get a lot of vegetables. I like the raised bed part because it keeps the critters out, and is a lot easier to work in.
Solar has never tasted so good!
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Here's a link to our sustainability page, under growing food you can see the tomato plants are taller than I am.
http://www.powerfullygreen.com/our-sustainability
