Options for raised beds, Self watering raised beds?

I want to build some fairly tall raised beds for the woman to grow her strawberries and herbs without having to stoop over. My original idea was to build them of locust logs, complete with log cabin style notching at the corners. Those would be way cool looking I think but my current supply of said logs is limited and I also want a new grape arbor and chicken coop. I have more nice logs but they are still in the form of trees and it ain't that easy for an old fart to turn a big locust tree into logs and move them to the appropriate spot.

So although I'm loath to spend money, also in short supply I'm thinking of using Rubbermaid stock tanks. Rubbermaid stock tanks

My questions on the stock tanks is if I do not drill any drain holes might I raise the bottom a little with something similar to the way you put broken pots in the bottom of a house plant might it all work a little like a self watering planter where water would collect in the small space below the existing drain hole and the bottom. Or might the existing drain clog or not be enough and result it the bed staying overly wet?

Either way I have all the necessary fill, just a matter of hauling it over and shoveling it in. Also either way it will be easy to build a frame over it so she can get some netting and cover it against the birds who previously have eaten all of her strawberries. Four of those tanks will almost exactly fit the length of her existing flower garden and the width is such she reach it all from one side. Tall sunflowers or something can hide the back side and she can figure some way to decorate the front if she wants too.

The price on those tanks,  ouch!
I would go with 55 gallon drums instead.
Even if you need to buy some plywood to hide them,  you will still come out ahead on price.

Now for the self watering bit,  definitely go for it.
I simply cut some slots in the bottom of a couple of buckets and put them upside down in the bottom of the barrel.

I cut my 55 gallon drums in half which gives me about 18 inches of height and drill the drainage holes about 2 inches up from the bottom. I get free broken bike rims from local bike shops and fit them around the cut edge to keep the barrel round. I put punky wood in the bottom to hold moisture. I find they really aren't quite tall enough to save my back, so if I ever have them empty, I'll put them up on blocks as I'm not getting any younger.

I've also been making some packing skid beds. I try to start with a 4' x 4' skid at least, and cut one half off just above the center 2x4 so I end up with about a 25" height. I then fill in one surface with salvaged wood and the ends as well. I stand 4 of these up in a square and use scrap sheep metal bent at 90 degrees to screw the sections together. I'm not big, but they're more than sturdy enough for me to put my butt on to reach the center of the bed for picking or weeding. We were at a local shop and scored 4 identical 6' long skids, so with 4' ends, I'm working on building two 4x6 beds for the spring. It's been very wet, so I've only got as far as one wall finished, but if I keep working at it, I'll get there!

Jay,  I too love pallet compost beds.
I am in the middle of moving one,  it's old and rotting,  but it's still sound enough.
The soil of the bed has held its shape,  which bodes well for the end life of all such beds.

I'm working on what the best way to cover them is, trying to keep it simple,  I've too many to want to do hoop houses for each one.

Important note on the sub irrigated planters.
Cut a slot or drill a hole in the side of the barrel,  about 14" from the bottom,  to allow excess water to flow out.

William Bronson wrote:

Jay,  I too love pallet compost beds.

This spring's first bed for strawberries. It's mate ended up with tomatoes and tomatillos this year, but I've got enough strawberry babies to transplant them for the spring.

Yours is much nicer looking than mine!

When I lived in central Indiana we got some powerful storms.  Thunderstorms, gushers, dousers, what have you.   But not gullywashers.  Indiana doesn't have gulleys. :)

If you're talking about placing stock tanks without any drain holes outside, filling them with grow media, and thinking that some broken pots on the bottom are going to help with moisture control, my answer is no.  Not even if the stock tanks were 5 feet high and you piled in 54" of broken pottery and 6" of soil on top.  Those stock tanks are going to act like... well, like stock tanks when that first rainstorm hits.  By the second or third rainstorm, water is going to pour out the top as the plants form a floatilla and raft away down the street singing sea shanties.

When you put plants into a drain-less container, no matter how big or small, you are now doing hydroponics.  You have wholly detached the growing media from the rest of the earth.  You cannot mitigate moisture, allow passage of worms and other decomposers, allow passage of spores or weeds, etc.  It now becomes 98% your responsibility to control how much water goes into the beds.  I do my fair share of growing in closed and partially closed systems, and I strongly prefer partially closed systems with drainholes and access to rain.  Closed systems indoors are not bad but you have to stay on top of things.

I think your first idea of building the beds from locust is excellent.  If you got someone with a chainsaw mill out there you'd be off to the races.

If you already have these stock tanks and they have some holes or damage in them, then I'd add more.  Vertical slits starting 6 inches from the ground up, about 4".  Maybe cut out the bottom.  You'll need to build braces either way.

If you already have these stock tanks and they don't have holes in them, you have an excellent opportunity for aquaponics.  Build raised growbeds from PVC pipe, gutters, plastic sheeting in wooden channels, etc and have them drain into the stock tanks.  Fill them with lightweight aggregate like expanded clay pellets, or even heavy media like pea gravel.  Put tilapia in the tank and pump the water into the grow bed.  With a bit of creativity these backyard aquaponics pods are quite beautiful.

If you don't have the stock tanks already I'd consider building the beds from concrete block, corrugated roofing panels, or your rot-resistant wood. Leave them open at the bottom (maybe hardware cloth to control pests) and then load them up with rotting wood, straw, manure, etc.  Then you're getting the best chance at moisture control, both surplus and drought.

Thanks, everybody. I haven't bought the tanks yet. We have a couple of old ones that we use as compost/potting soil holders. They come with a drain hole already, my concern from what I've seen with them is if I don't drill additional holes that it might not be enough. I'm sure it would eventually drain but if it got blocked so it did not do so freely, those Indiana downpours could leave it all soggy for days. If I do drill additional holes then I ruin them for other uses like aquaponics.

I have quite a few 1/2 barrels the winery I work for gives me but as someone said they are not quite tall enough for her to comfortably tend her strawberries and are all currently in use by me for sweet potatoes. Only place I know to get pallets is an hour and 1/2 away.

I have another idea. Use 3' tall hog panels, just prop them up with t-posts and figure something to line the inside with, maybe vinyl siding? I have a little of it already out in one of my junk piles. If I used them I could leave the ends open at first and be able to dump in the fill with the cart rather than shovel it in, reducing the total shoveling by 1/2. The t-posts holding them up would make a pre-made frame for the bird net, just run some wire across the top.

I'd like to do it by surprise for Christmas but she is retired and pretty much always here so no way the surprise is going to work.  

Rob Lineberger wrote:If you're talking about placing stock tanks without any drain holes outside, filling them with grow media, and thinking that some broken pots on the bottom are going to help with moisture control, my answer is no.  

No, I think that's not what people mean when they talk about sub-irrigated planters. Those would have drainage holes below the bottom of the soil, at the top of the water reservoir.

Maybe the answer is to dig down slightly on the walkway of the bed to get the correct operational level?
By your original explanation I understood that you wanted to build a self wicking system.
If that's not the case, why not just take off the bottom of the barrel and expose to surrounding soil?
I build up a bit of a Hugel layering system inside my raised beds, avoids plenty cost when it comes to soil?
Also if you're digging down you can use the soil to fill.
Take into account that Hugel filling sinks about a 1/3 (could be climate/material dependent) over the span of the first year and has to be backfilled.
Strawberries love wicking beds.

Mark,  I think your cattle panel idea is a good one.
You might not need to line them at all, or at most,  line them with cardboard.
If you have any waste wood,  toss it in the bottom, it will rot and settle,  but very slowly.
Split hose can slip over the top edge  for comfort/safety.

A second inner ring could be a compost area.

This is a new bed made out of a wire bin salvaged from a retail store .
I filled with leaves,  and it will be capped with finished compost.

I think I'll go with the hog panels. Seems like the way to get the best bang for the buck. They are about $20 for a 16' section and I only need a couple full length, I do need to cut them in half to haul. I have plenty of smaller sections for the ends. I have a bunch of old garden hose that I can split and fix over the edge on top. The height is just about right so she won't have to bend or stoop at all to tend her plants.

I'm intrigued by this Hugel idea. With the Ash trees all dying a few years ago I have massive amounts of partly decayed wood laying around. Plus when ever it rains hard there is lots that washes down and piles up, easily accessible in lots of places along the roads.  And when ever the Ohio River has a little bit of high water the parking areas at all the area boat ramps are covered in drift wood, I could fill a pickup in a few minutes but it probably will be spring when the river floods again.

I have an area behind my back garden where I harvest top soil. I just go back there with my cart and cut out chunks five or six inches thick. It leaves an odd looking bare spot but I been doing it for years and the older parts have regenerated with cedar, black locust, honeysuckle and the like. I'll never need that spot again and the wild thicket makes a nice block between us and the neighbor to the north. They are 1/2 mile away but still I prefer not to see their lights at night.

At 16' x 4' x 3' that's about 64 cubic yards of fill. Moving in the rotting wood will be pretty easy, shoveling the soil a little bit harder. If I go with say a 3 to 1 ration of wood to soil in layers would that be about right? I'll put 6 - 10 inches of better soil and compost on the top.

I generally fill most of the bed with varying sized of branches. Most things should start growing in 6-8 inches of soil.
The first planting in new beds I do using tiller (daikon) radish and beans.
Starts producing exudates and getting nitrogen cycling going in the soil.
When planting in seedlings add a good handful of thermophillic compost to root zone.

Here are some beds built from sheep fencing and tarp plastic. not wicking beds, open to the soil at the bottom, but looks pretty neat

links to instagram pictures

Mark Reed wrote:

At 16' x 4' x 3' that's about 64 cubic yards of fill. Moving in the rotting wood will be pretty easy, shoveling the soil a little bit harder. If I go with say a 3 to 1 ration of wood to soil in layers would that be about right? I'll put 6 - 10 inches of better soil and compost on the top.

The idea is to closely pack the biggest chunks of wood at the bottom of the bed with just enough soil around it to fill in the gaps and holes. The wood will act like a giant sponge to hold water. Then you put skinnier branches and wood with a higher percentage of soil on top of that. If you use too much wood higher up, you'll need a source of nitrogen or it will take a couple of years for your growies to be happy. That could mean a cover crop of clover, or something like peas and beans on the north side of the bed where they won't block the light, or sneaking over and watering with well-diluted liquid gold every 4-5 days assuming your neighbor won't disown you if she finds out - some attitudes are harder to shift than others. A 'compost tube' in the center can help as well as usually they end up being worm buffets, but they will also attract slugs, so knowing your eco-system is critical (I have ducks - I "harvest" slugs from areas the ducks are excluded from and I'm greeted well for my efforts.)

However, as mentioned elsewhere, the beds will sink over time - fewer holes between logs at the bottom will reduce the shrinkage, but it will still be noticeable, so try to plan for topping it up the following fall, and quite possibly the fall after that. Last year, I topped up my new bed with fairly fresh compost covered in a good layer of leaves in the fall. The leaves were a sort that don't decompose very fast (Wisteria). In the spring, I scraped the leaves off into a garbage can and replaced that volume with compost that had finished during the winter.   This summer, that bed hardly shrank at all, so I only added a token layer of fairly aged compost and planted winter garlic and peas.  Depending on our winter, the peas may not make it, but their roots will hold the soil and if I get an early crop, that's a bonus. The garbage can of leaves topped up a different bed this fall and it will be interesting to see if they're identifiable by the spring.

I have an abundance of the ash wood that has already started to rot. When the trees died I couldn't use it all for fire wood anyway so rather than mess with splitting any of it I just rolled the big chunks off to the edges of the yard where they have laid for a few years. I can easily fill the bottom two feet using them with chunks of topsoil and sod in between. The top soil will have all the grass and weeds that come with it. I also have the brush piles that have rotted and collapsed down into semi compost, that mixed with more topsoil can make the next 6 or 8 inches, then a mix of soil and good compost on top. I figured such a configuration would likely sink over time so I'll pile that top layer to the brim.

I have a lot of that rotting wood and a lot of those collapsed brush piles and easy access to a lot more similar material. I'm not gonna dig trenches but I may start turning the whole back garden into a series of these semi-hugle type things.  

I live not too too far away from you, and I have found that wood in raised beds acts as a moderator for moisture.
We get a lot of rain here, and the raised  beds that have wood in their base have thrived rain or shine.
I just moved a bed that was fully settled and over 5 years old, the wood is still there in chunks.