I built a raised RAISED bed

This past Tuesday the sun came out and I snuck into the woodshop to build this beauty. Hoorah! Feels so good to be working in the sunshine with cedar wood and power tools.

First of all, why build a garden bed 3 feet off the ground with stilts? It's more work up front, costs a little more cash money, and doesn't provide a ton of square footage to garden with. Here are the benefits:

• Mobility. You could pick up this baby and lug it around town if you wanted! Mobility is nice if you don't own a yard and anticipate moving. Also if you want to turn your entire backyard into a slip'n'slide without any obstructions. Whatever your reason, mobility creates flexibility, this is good.

• Easy on the back. Less crouching, knees in the dirt and leaning over. Simply luxurious

• Pet friendly. If your dogs can jump into this bed then they deserve a garden treat. 

• Visually appealing. If you have a smaller yard, the heightened raised bed will give the appearance that its taking up less space than it actually is. 

So, I've never built a bed like this before. Here's how I figured out how and what to do...

First step: Dreaming and inspiration seeking

I knew the basics of what I wanted: 

• A raised bed about 3 ft. tall
• accessible from one side (this bed is going to be put up against a fence). That means it can't be too wide.
• soil deep enough for root veggies
• enough square footage for a new gardener. (that means, not so much its overwhelming!)
• not too expensive.. 

I found this image on google. Sweet, I can work with this.

Second Step: Come up with a plan

• I found this plan on Ana Whites website. (She is the bomb) Click the picture for a link to the plan.
• Make adjustments for your needs
• This bed didn't provide quite enough square footage for me. So.. I built two!
• I made the bed deeper for root veggies by adding an extra foot.
• I also made it cheaper by using heavy duty screws called lag bolts. Ana's plan called for regular bolts which were more costly.
• My bed will be holding twice as much soil and rain water so I needed to make the weight bearing capacity higher. In Ana's plan the bottom is comprised of hardware fabric, staples and wooden slats. I substituted small screws for the staples and doubled the number of wooden slats. My bed is TOUGH.

• P.S. I didn't come up with these adjustments myself. I asked for help at Lowe's and asked wood working friends lots of questions. On my own I would never save any money or guild anything sturdy. 

Here she is! 

Tra La! This picture was taken before I put on the wooden slats. 

Questions?