Six years in the making, but our raised beds are almost finished. A few repairs, a walkway around the outside. and a fence and I’m officially retiring from raised bed construction! The beds themselves are dry stacked 8"x8"x16" concrete blocks, reinforced with internal rebar driven vertically into the ground, and filled with compacted stone. Each wall sits on a 6-12" deep by 12" wide stone footer that drains into a french drain system that runs down the center of each aisle. The original design did not include footers - if you look at the far left bottom bed of the first overhead shot, you can see why footers are a must (that’s the last remaining bed without a retrofitted footer). There are companion plants in the hollow areas between each level: lavender, marigolds, chives, yarrow, dwarf sage, etc. We believe they are doing more good than harm…with the harm being our continued effort to keep them trimmed to avoid overcrowding the main plants.
We grow pretty much everything and have had a lot of success with the beds. Tomatoes, brambles, strawberries, cucumbers, squash, garlic, sweet potatoes and greens have done very well. Potatoes and watermelon seem to be the least happy with this setup.
