Question about portable garden bed

Hi guys. I'm new to the whole permaculture idea. While I learn more about it I figured I might as well start learning more about how to grow my own food.
Since I have a lack of space in my backyard I'm making a portable garden plot. It should be somthing around 60x30x24 with 4 support legs/wheels (we have concrete in the backyard). My question is do I need to have a mesh bottom for the floor of this portable bed or would 2 feet of soil soak up enough of the water? And my second question is as far as growing kale,carrots,cucumber,zuccinni, is 2 feet of soil enough?


Thanks !

Mesh would work well, or, you could container garden with your setup equally well. I do a fair bit of container gardening and have grown tons of stuff. However, if you have a setup as you describe, it will be heavy. Not to discourage you, just having been there...

Howdy Kelso and Tom,
Did you mean that there will be a pan under the mesh that water could be put into and the soil would wick it up out of the pan ? Or are you talking about water draining out to the ground?

I think two feet of soil is good, Have you heard about Hugelculture ? Might be interesting if you added a layer of wood under the soil too!

I think Kelso means drainage, from what I gather. Hugel would be interesting in this setting, but I fear the setup Kelso describes might be a bit unwieldily to move around by one person. Taking constant moving off the table, however, a deeper "tray" with wood scraps, mulch, etc., would rock!

It would essentially look something like this just deeper so the roots have room to grow. My question if this picture helps is that I was wondering if a solid wood bed would be sufficient or would holes in the bottom be better? I feel just a mesh bottom would run the risk of loosing soil or breaking. I also dont want to waste water by having it just leak out back to the ground.

For something like what is show in the image, holes would do well. Maybe 1/2 inch or so, spaced every 4 inches. An all mesh bottom isn't really needed. You need this drainage so salt and minerals do not build up in the soil. The 6 inch depth in the image is fine for herbs and such, but for tomatoes, peppers, etc., 12 inches would be better. Or, by using the perforated bags that commercial growers use, you could have any depth of soil anywhere you need it, as these collapsable " pots" come in myriad sizes for just about any application and are inexpensive. Last summer, I used trays of about 6 inches for carrots and they worked well, as long as you don't care about size(they were only 2-3inches long) .If you were to make your tray depth 12 inches or more, there would be very little restriction in what you could grow.