Raised garden bed plans and kits come in different styles and sizes. These are great for growing herbs and your own ingredients for salsa or salad. Once you’ve mastered the gardening technique, you can make a raised garden bed to plant crowds of seasonal flowers to add color to your landscape.

Kits are available in a range of sizes and materials. Most types of garden beds are the open-bottom variety that are placed directly on the ground. Some elevated raised garden beds are assembled on legs. These are great for small patios or decks and require even less bending or squatting to tend to the plants.

• Cedar raised garden beds from a kit can be used to create a thriving garden using untreated wood that naturally resists rot and insects. Left organic, the wood will weather nicely to a silver-gray color over time.
• Vinyl, plastic and composite raised garden beds are strong and durable containers that are built to last. These types of raised garden beds are designed to resist warping and can help ensure a long and maintenance-free life in outdoor conditions.

While wooden beds are available in kits, learning how to build a raised garden bed is a straightforward project suitable for those with some experience using common tools. For a simple raised garden bed:

• Create a four-sided structure using 2- x 10-inch lumber that has been cut to length.
• The dimensions of your DIY raised garden bed can vary depending on your needs and available space.
• The garden bed should be four-feet-wide or less. Anything wider than that can make it difficult to reach the center of the bed.
• Never walk through your raised beds. Make the beds reachable from at least 2 sides.
• Place the shorter walls flush to the longer walls to create a rectangle.
• Drill pilot holes and use 2-1/2-inch deck screws to fasten the short walls to the ends of the long walls.

Safety: Using pressure-treated lumber is an option. Today’s pressure-treated wood is designated safe to use around people, pets, plants and vegetables. If you are concerned about using treated wood, line the interior walls of the garden bed with sheet plastic before adding soil.

Protect against pests by lining the bottom of the bed with weed block, builder's paper or landscape fabric.

This barrier between the soil in the bed and the soil in your yard helps keep weeds and grass from growing in the bed from below. At the same time, it is porous and will allow water to pass through for proper drainage.

Keep the weed barrier in place with landscape fabric pegs fastened around the interior edge of the raised garden bed.

Adding Soil
Note: I use a formula for my 2x4 raised elevated beds that is 4 cu. ft. (two 2cu.foot bags) good potting soil, and a 40-lb. bag of compost/manure mix on top of that. I mix it lightly together - i want more comp0st on top, which is where small or shallow plant roots like to eat and drink.

The elevated garden beds i use are shown below. They are pre-made and all you have to do is snap in the legs, fill the planter, and get planting. All in 10 minutes!

• Adjust the ratios of soil and amendments according to the needs of the plants you select.
• Add enough soil mix to fill the bed. Some settling will occur.
• Use the formula Length x Width x Depth to determine the amount of soil needed to fill the container. A raised garden bed that measures 8-feet by 4-feet by 10-inches will need about 27-cubic feet of soil. 
• The standing beds i use, shown below, take about 3 cu. ft. of good potting soil, and i add about 1 cu. ft. of compost.