Ferrocement Raised Hugel Beds

New garden beds finished so I thought I would post some photos. The previous owner had leveled an area for building which was hugely taken over by thistle and mullein. The soil was comprised of very heavy clay so we decided to mulch the area and put in raised beds for our annual garden. We had some experience building ferrocement garden beds attached to the house so we decided to go this route so that we could have some nice deep beds that would last our lifetime and be simple and cheap to build. The longest bed is approximately 45'x3.5' and 1.5' tall.

We did experiment with making these hugelkultur beds and buried some old rotting firewood at the base of some, did strawbale hugelkultur in some of the others.

I realize that I might get slammed if Paul looks closely at the photos and sees we put cardboard down in one, but it is too hot to light the rocket stove up and I really didn't want those bull thistle to come up among my bok choy. Though knowing thistle, they will probably make their way up anyhow.

That is some beautiful work you’ve done there. I have no suggestions to make it better. I believe you have it covered!

I love those organic forms and curves.  Very pleasing.  That's going to be an amazing space once you've got it planted out and it all grows in.

And I use a lot of cardboard in my gardening as well --- anything bad, I let the fungi take care of.

Thanks for sharing those pictures.

That makes my best work look very crude!  That's Awesome!

Great job Daniel! May your vegetables and flowers grow abundantly!

I have never worked with furrocement before and was wondering if you could explain the details in making your retaining walls?

Thanks Gerry. I am going to post a more indepth with photos of the process on my website which is my signature, but have not done so yet so I will post a smaller version here.

I cut rebar stakes at 3 feet and spaced them in the shape of the beds I wanted every 2 feet. I pounded them in about halfway and then used diamond metal lathe typically used for stucco work to make the wall shape. The lathe is 8' x 26" so I was able to fold them in half to create a more rigid form. These I secured to the stakes using six inch cable ties and then trimmed the tails of the ties.

I made ferrocement plaster which was 4 parts sand to 1 part portland. I mix it with water to the consistency of toothpaste and then would use my hands to trowel it onto the walls. It takes two coats to get a good layer over all the metal. Then I make a slightly thicker mix of cement material and make a ridge on top of the walls about 3 inches thick. This makes a nice round cap and lifts the height a bit too.

I then make a portland paint with pigment, portland, and water and paint it on. These beds still need a finish coat of linseed oil on the outside.

Basically that is all--makes fast beds that are basically indestructible. I backed into one with my truck and only chipped the top off 4 inches wide.

Some of the portland mix tends to fall off as your are coating the mesh, but you can just smooth this down at the base and it creates a really nice stable bottom to the bed as well as a flare to keep weeds out too.

Thank you for the description Daniel. Love the work that you and your wife do. Haven't been to your site in a few months so I'll be sure to check it out again.

What is ferrocement?

Also, very beautiful garden

s. lowe, ferrocement is the application of thin coats of cement over a metal skeleton. It is a technique used around the world for water cisterns and was even previously used in the United States for bridge building. The higher ratio of metal to portland creates extremely strong structures with very little material. It also tends to have higher portland to sand ratios 3:1 or 4:1.

Very nice. Looking forward to seeing them planted & growing!

Hi Daniel,   Wondering if you have any photos of your beds filled with vegetables and pretty flowers? Am currently in the process of making a small ferro-cement garden myself. Always enjoy your content and input.

Thanks Gerry, I've found a couple. I should remember to take more photos in the future. They were a great success. I had a single crack form on the side of the really long bed where water pooled next to it and heaved this winter, but it doesn't seem to have mattered much. I might try to get the water to run a different direction and see if that helps. I also had a massive deer problem this year. You would think with two malamutes living out there that they wouldn't come in, but that is life. I'm putting up a deer fence this year, so I think my crops should double without the massive pressure they had last year. I lost all but two of my cabbages and basically all of my chard.

Pretty pictures!  A place to be very proud of!

That is one lovely garden Daniel. Looks like you harvested a good bounty from all your hard work.

Here is my progress on making a raised bed garden thanks to your inspiration.
Going to use fabric dipped in a cement slurry for the first layer then do a skim stucco coat for the second.
Its about 5 feet at the widest point and maybe 15 feet long and 2 feet high, but variable for natural aesthetics.

Gerry Parent wrote:Here is my progress on making a raised bed garden thanks to your inspiration.

Gerry, I hope you'll keep posting your progress. This thread is full of beautiful work and it's really encouraging to see others tackling their own projects in response. Makes me go "Hmmmm".

Gerry, i'm interested in the fabric dipping method. I almost did it after the first bed I did. I didn't bend the wire in half to create a double thickness of mesh and it was a nightmare to plaster. Once I realized a shorter bed was better and that i could fold the wire over on itself it went a lot easier. Love to see the photos, thanks!

Being my first time at this, there was a learning curve. Choice of fabric was one of them. I had a whole pile of old towels, bed sheets, old curtains etc saved up for rags and drop cloths and not sure which ones to use I experimented with them all. I had read that dipping the cloth first in water to hydrate them before coating with a cement slurry was to help the fabric absorb the cement better. That made total sense and worked just fine with all the fabrics. Where it differed though was during the cement slurry application. The thicker cloths held a lot more cement and became much heavier and harder to handle bigger pieces and vise versa for the thinner fabrics. So obviously, you can get much more coverage using the thin ones and it was also a lot easier to wring out the excess slurry before draping them over the form work.
It seemed like a sure winner to use the thin fabric from now on....that is, until I inspected my work I did yesterday this morning.  
The thin bed sheets had barely gotten stiff while the thicker ones had actually hardened up and held their shape well. So it looks like I'm going to have to go back over the thin areas with thicker fabrics. No big deal, just good to know.
Another thing I learned is that when I built the form work, it all had nearly vertical sides - some actually curved inwards and this meant that when I draped the cement soaked cloth over it, some of the sides didn't even touch the chicken wire and just dangled with no support behind them, making it almost impossible to plaster. Similar to what I think you found out Daniel.
It would have been better to taper the form work so that it was wider at the bottom and narrower at the top.

Will continue my experiments and report what works/ doesn't work for me.

Hi Gerry Parent and others on this thread

I love all the information in this thread and all the photos - thanks so much for sharing your wisdom.

I live in London, UK and have a very small garden and so want to maximise the planting space. I've opted for this ferrocement method of building for some raised garden beds, as:

- it takes up minimal space compared to what the straight lines of bricks or railway sleepers would take up
- allows me to choose organic rounded shapes for the walls which would otherwise be limited to straight lines made by other building materials
- it's pretty simple and doesn't require heavy lifting and shipping of heavy building materials
- it's much more affordable than bricks etc!

I'm especially grateful to Gerry Parent for all the information about the fabric dipping - what a great way to use up old material! So I have my rebars in the ground, the chicken wire cladding them and am about to go outside and do my first layer of concrete. I'm imagining it will be a bit like putting a plaster cast on someone who's broken their wrist with the difference being using concrete instead of plaster of paris as the hardening agent. Wish me luck - I'll come back with an update soon

Gerry Parent wrote:Being my first time at this, there was a learning curve. Choice of fabric was one of them. I had a whole pile of old towels, bed sheets, old curtains etc saved up for rags and drop cloths and not sure which ones to use I experimented with them all. I had read that dipping the cloth first in water to hydrate them before coating with a cement slurry was to help the fabric absorb the cement better. That made total sense and worked just fine with all the fabrics. Where it differed though was during the cement slurry application. The thicker cloths held a lot more cement and became much heavier and harder to handle bigger pieces and vise versa for the thinner fabrics. So obviously, you can get much more coverage using the thin ones and it was also a lot easier to wring out the excess slurry before draping them over the form work.
It seemed like a sure winner to use the thin fabric from now on....that is, until I inspected my work I did yesterday this morning.  
The thin bed sheets had barely gotten stiff while the thicker ones had actually hardened up and held their shape well. So it looks like I'm going to have to go back over the thin areas with thicker fabrics. No big deal, just good to know.
Another thing I learned is that when I built the form work, it all had nearly vertical sides - some actually curved inwards and this meant that when I draped the cement soaked cloth over it, some of the sides didn't even touch the chicken wire and just dangled with no support behind them, making it almost impossible to plaster. Similar to what I think you found out Daniel.
It would have been better to taper the form work so that it was wider at the bottom and narrower at the top.

Will continue my experiments and report what works/ doesn't work for me.

Glad to hear the information was helpful.
Good luck on your project!

Hi again Gerry Parent

I'd love to see what your garden bed looks like these days - do you have any photos you could share? Is it standing up to the test of time?

Also how many days did you wait before you started on your second coat of cement after the initial soak and drape of old towels etc?

Many thanks in advance

Laura

Unfortunately, I can no longer share any photos as I no longer live at that location anymore.
Being cement though, I would imagine that as long as it wasn't smucked with a shovel or something, it should be just fine.
From my memory, the second coat was applied within a few days of the first.

Hi Gerry Parent
Oh that's a shame! Can you see it if you look at your old address on Google Maps?  Sometimes you can zoom in quite a lot to see what an old garden or house looks like now

Googles images for Canada (especially in the rural areas) quite frankly suck. Old image dates, some blurry and hard to recognize things without already knowing what they are.
Permie Daniel Ray (the OP of this thread) still may be using his and can attest to its longevity?

Does ferrocement break down over time affecting soil pH? And is that what the linseed oil is for?