My garden is on a slope down hill so I terrace it at stages. The edge of the bed by the berry trellis is ground level and then the opposite side is 11"-12" tall. This is my lettuce/spinach bed. I'm making 18"-24" deep beds out of ibc tote bladders to try sweet potatoes.
Just a suggestion based on some of my mistakes. When making a raised bed or using pots or planting bags, one needs to provide a way for the planters to retain moisture. With grow bags and pots, I have found that not placing any holes for water to drain less than about three inches up from the bottom. This seems low enough to prevent the planters from becoming water logged or soggy, yet also provides space that will allow water to collect and wick upward to the plants. I dont really have an ideal on how to do this with raised beds. I suspect some plastic liner in the bottom of the raised bed would be effective, but I havnt tried it so just a guess. Another ideal I think might work is placeing a bucket above the raised bed filled with water. Place a piece of cloth in the bottom of the bucket and let it extend outside into the soil. The cloth will act like a siphon hose and gradually drain the water from the bucket into the soil. I have seen this work for small pots and plants, so again I can only guess this will work on a larger scale like a raised bed. Depending on size of the raised bed, it might take more than one bucket of water, and more than one wick per bucket, one would just have to play around with it to find out what works. Since you already have the raised beds, I would try the bucket trick, if it works great, report back and let us know. If it dont work, you are not out anything, and let us know that to. Just a sample below.
Interesting. I didn't know about the bucket thing. I've made raised beds from the ibc bladders like this:
I have MULTIPLE hoses and I use hoses to water the garden. I only wish when I built the house, I would have trenched in an underground line and put a hydrant next to the garden (which wasn't there yet.
I have a buddy with a green house that built his own drip system. He took it a little further than just a drip. First he placed a tote in one corner of the greenhouse. In the tote he filled it with fish (bream). He added a small pump that pumps water to some float trays. The water flows from the float trays to a bunch of hanging 5gal buckets that are all connected together with pipe. These buckets all have drip tubes that drip into his pots. The pots all set in a tray that holds water and and redirects the water back to the tote. I am sure I missed a few details, maybe I can go visit and take a few pics. He sure grows a lot in one small greenhouse. He eats the fish and they reproduce in the tote.
My additions this year are a blackberry and a raspberry. The fruit trees from last year look ready to go.
The cheap white plastic lattice shades a concrete slab below a deck.
Now that I look at it, probably should shore up this corner of the slab.
I'm planning on keeping the fruit trees well pruned since I don't have a lot of room for them. I don't have a lot of flat property for planting.
