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Construction Slides from the Vertical Gardening Seminar. OSU/Master Gardener Mini-College 2012. Garden structure: Raised Beds & Vertical Gardening. Raised Bed Construction Sizing – 4’ max width Materials – spit face block – 4” best (no PT) Foundation - choices
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Construction Slides from the Vertical Gardening Seminar OSU/Master Gardener Mini-College 2012
Garden structure: Raised Beds & Vertical Gardening Raised Bed Construction Sizing – 4’ max width Materials – spit face block – 4” best (no PT) Foundation - choices Drain vents – fabric + ¼ minus Hardware cloth – ½” galvanized – tight fit Trellis PVC – “U” bolts • Enables vertical trellising • Enables Hooping you beds – to extend season
Trellis Construction Use ½” EMT ( Electrical Metal Tubing) – about $2.00 per 10’ length – Lowes / Home Depot etc Bend corners of trellis with tubing bender or use a 90 degree “L”fitting Join sides together with ½” EMT coupler (screws together) Use pre-tied STRONG nylon netting with a minimum of 6” openings (I prefer 7”)- I use Park Seed trellis netting – recommend you get the 5’ x 60’ roll ($25) as the 5’ x 15’ costs $15 Use black (UV protected) tie wraps to secure netting to frame Maximum trellis width is about 55” – 60” My trellises still look new after 5 years
Trellis Installation Install trellises in PVC holders inside raised beds You can install trellises anywhere by using ½” rebar – 3’ long, driven 18” into the ground … then slide the trellis over the rebar. You can pull the rebar out and put your trellis in a new location at will.
Soil In a Raised Bed you have complete control of the soil that will grow your plants. It’s also a reasonably small volume of soil compared to Horizontal Gardens, so costs are more reasonable to create a superb growing medium. I recommend you fill your beds with: 50-50 or 60-40 compost / sandy loam mix (I use Highway Fuel) Do a soil analysis and amend as prescribed to make it perfect I do soil analysis every other year – sometimes yearly – using small samples from all the beds for an average.
If you have any questions or comments… Please contact me at harryolson@comcast.net or 503-315-8313