If anything, it seems like wood sides to a bed give rodents more protection. A roof to tunnel under.
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Just finished putting in beds for my blueberries and strawberries. They turned out decently well. Made hinged panels for the strawberries that I will cover with bird netting to keep chipmunks and birds out. The blueberries will be topped with bird netting as well once they are established and making berries.
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How did you bring in the gravel? Looks like a lot. It’s perfectly smooth!
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Thanks! We had it dropped in the alley behind our house. Then it was me, a shovel, and many (many!) trips with a wheelbarrow. After it was in place I raked it flat and tamped it down.
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@disc4tw — on the rodents and raised beds…
When I was a kid my grandfather had a nice place out in the country with 5 ponds, one was 5 acres… and he raised chickens, had ducks, geese, etc…
In his house where he kept his chicken food (cracked corn mostly) he had a huge ceramic ? (I think) bin that he kept his chicken feed in. It had very slick, glass like sides… and was probably 2 ft tall, and he kept it pushed up against the side of the chicken house…
The mice, rats, etc… that went after the corn could jump off in there… but they could not climb back out… the sides were too slick.
But… they climbed right up the wooden wall of the chicken house, to get to the top edge of that big pot to jump in.
I think for a raised bed to really be effective at deterring rodents the sides would have to be too slick for them to easily climb. Wood they can easily scale and get what ever they want at the top.
In my long raised beds with no retaining walls… I grow a large variety of fruit, berries, veggies and in that bed that I included a pic of earlier in this thread, I got a nice crop of strawberries (which are of course right at ground level) and also raspberries, last year, with no problems.
This year there will be lots more getting ripe in that bed including peaches, hopefully a few apples, blackberries, goumi, jujube, etc… I don’t expect to have a rodent problem, never really have, not that i have noticed anyway.
I did notice this in another bed last year, my blueberries… which are planted in a similar raised bed with no retaining wall… even when covered with bird netting, I was still loosing some berries. I don’t think it was birds getting them… and did suspect field mice. Bird netting did not stop what ever it was, so expect it was something small like that.
My blueberries are loaded this year, so I will have to deal with that again. Not real sure what to do about that. I bagged some blueberry clusters last year, and that worked pretty good, will do that again this year too.
I really like the look of your raised beds, wish I had some of those. I just never went to the trouble of making them, other than what I have now.
One thing that I would really like to have a nice raised bed for (similar to yours) is Strawberries.
I think it would be ideal to have those elevated up where you could easily work them, pick them and eat them. No bending over.
I have considered using the brick/block type paver stones to make a raised bed for strawberries… I may do that for next years crop. I have strawberries planted in my long food forest bed now, but that makes it a pain, when putting down new mulch. Fruit Trees and Berry bushes are pretty easy to mulch around, but strawberries you have to be careful not to cover them up.
TNHunter
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I currently have a few strawberries planted in one of my beds. I will likely be switching them over to my larger planting areas for the alpines as an “edible shrub” and my other unknown berries to my vertical planters once I get them rigged up
Vertical planting tips and ideas
It seems like you have a bit more land to work with than I do. You might look into sourcing some 10"-24" hdpe culvert pipe, cutting it in half (twice as much length for the price!) and elevating it off the ground with concrete block, brick etc, with one end higher than the other to allow for drainage and placing a layer of diatomaceous earth as a water retaining “French drain” underneath the top soil layer which could wick that moisture from the DE. If I had more room that’s the route I’d take for strawberries. It could even be placed against a fence as a “strawberry espalier”, with each piece of pipe draining to the one below. I guess in a way that is a novel raised bed idea in itself.
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Just put in a 6’ fence to exclude our lazy deer. Previous fence was 4 feet with some baling twine lines higher. Last season some deer started jumping between the lines. I’ve never seen a deer here jump 5’, pretty confident 6 is sufficient - they’re never starving.
I also grew it a little to make room for the riding mower around the perimeter and between the rows. I find this much easier to control the thistle:
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I had no money when I built these this spring. there’s two
one in front of the camera is torn logs from the neighbor’s tree they took down and were trying to get rid of, and a few limbs from a black locust we had to cut back. the branches are tied together and woven over/under at the corners.
the one further away was cast-off and busted up planks and boards from our old shed that got tore down. just nailed together at the counters to some more of the bigger log chunks.
I filled them halfways with more log and branches, pine straw I raked up from our two big monster pine trees, and then straw- then I used a big bag of “raised bed soil” mixed with old compost, some soil conditioner on top. I had a half bag of old steer manure I mixed in.
then wood chip and straw on top of that. it was all castoff or leftover stuff except the bag of actual dirt and that was outside my budget, I wish I could have found free dirt somehow.
anyway I did all that used up all the leftover stuff from spring planting and stuck random seeds in. the one bed here is the only place any tomatoes are coming up in my entire garden! I am pretty surprised anything is doing ok in them.
the corn in the back one is really bad, no pollination, silk got ate up by bugs. but there’s tomatoes and basil in it.
closer one, there’s Patty pan in there but they weren’t pollinating I think because the heat. we’ll see maybe they’ll make some yet, I have until October.
things can look disastrous and be cobbled together and still be fun to try to use.I think next year these will be really good, I’ll put more better stuff on top of whatever dirt is in em.
edit; yeah the corner logs are hollow the tree was dying. I planted cucumbers inside the hollow logs in front and tomatoes in the back hollow one. the littlest one wasn’t hollow though. I did throw cardboard on the very bottom to cut the grass and weeds underneath down.
I got bindweed coming up in from around the sides though.
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This spring I used shelving brackets to stabilize a 4x4 foot bed made of 2x12" rough cedar.
The brackets commonly come in 6, 8, 10, 12" sizes with pre-drilled holes and in white, brown or grey, and are very inexpensive.
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Saw these pics posted recently and to me they seem like a fantastic idea.
They are cheap chicken coops converted into areas to grow things.
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I did mounded beds this year, just old low crappy wire fencing, wrapped in landscape fabric I have no other use for. a few old cracked 2x4s and some tomato stakes for a bit of stability. filled with pine straw, 2 year old horse poop, soil conditioner from a bag, a little perlite and whatever leftover promix I had. done osmocote thrown along in them.
these are about a foot tall.
this photo right after slapping them together, it’s a mess here. the aquarium was getting some early starts a jump on things, it worked ok and is now cleaned and being used for oyster mushrooms in the basement
… when I say I have no money I really mean it. most of my garden is reclaimed materials.
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I recant my submission. Weeds in the aisles were unmanageable, plus the voles loved the mulch and under the boards. I pulled out the beds and set up the fencing to be easy to open then ends and peel back the fencing off of the T-posts so I can drive my 55" tiller from one end o the other, and space the beds so I can mow the paths and perimeter with a mulching riding mower.
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I have borderless raised bed like @TNHunter, no problem with rats, they go after the strawberries, so I don’t grow them anymore.
My flat garden is actually a borderless raised bed. I broke up a huge area with tractor and disk and then used a box blade to gather as much topsoil as i could into that 12x40 bed area.
If you look close you can see how it slopes off on the right and left sides.
And when i plant okra… i make a borderless raised bed on my borderless raised bed.
Okra does not like wet feet especially if it turns a little cool after you plant it.
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Private garden or nursery or both? Lovely!
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You are so neat and organized. I could only dream.
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