Monday, March 29, 2010

Raised Garden Beds With Reclaimed Materials

Last week I confessed my desire for a green thumb and low and behold the clouds broke and my will was tested.  I found a great raised bed tutorial online but for a price tag of 170.00 per bed I knew that it was simply not in the budget.  The budget is $0 by the way.  So, I took to Craig's List to see what was shaking in the free department.  A lot was going on people.  Have you been there?  We found free wood, gravel, river rock, even a pair of iron Japanese lanterns.  My husband borrowed my brothers truck and in a few short hours he was piecing together the boxes.


This wood was reclaimed from an old antique shop in Seattle and we pulled the cement brick pavers from an unused patio in our front yard.


We put down a weed barrier cloth and then topped it with sand (reclaimed from the front yard patio we got the bricks from).  Steve dragged a 2x4 across the sand to level it and began placing the bricks in a random pattern.
 
We didn't get all our bricks down before the rains came back.  The next step is to cover the path with sand, sweeping it into the cracks and then wetting it down with a hose so it becomes compact.  Tutorials suggest that you may have to repeat this process to create a truly stable surface.  

Yes, our wood is mismatched and our pathway might not be quite level but I have to say that nothing looks quite as good as free feels!

More pictures and updates to come.

1 comment:

Amanda said...

So far, very cool for free. Keep taking pics and posting them so we can watch your progress. The bricks, different sizes and colors, look great.

My neice, by the way, got enough cyclone fencing for free to do her whole back yard from Craig's list. All she had to do was pay for the posts and cement, plus go pick up the fencing.

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