Do you love gardening? If yes, then you should be subscribed by now to James Prigioni’s YouTube channel called ‘The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni’.
This guy loves gardening but loves doing everything the natural way.
As written in the ‘About‘ section of his channel:
” I use No pesticides, No herbicides. No fungicides, No growth hormones, No antibiotics, and No fertilizers. I allow nature to be the teacher and mimic the natural forest model to create an ideal living environment for all living things.”
In this particular video, Prigioni will show us all how to make a raised plant bed without spending too much.
You just need wood pallets.
According to him, the first thing to do is prepare the wooden pallets. Getting them depends on you, Prigioni here got his from a local gardening center and from a local recycling center.
When thinking about the size of the raised plant bed, it depends on the available space that you have. In the video, he’s doing a 4ft by 8ft bed.
You don’t need to have a lot of gardening or power tools to do this, just a couple of drilling and cutting materials.
The steps are pretty easy too.
Step Number One: As shown in the video, grab a circular saw to cut through the pallets. It’s the plain parts in between the nailed portions. Make around 14 to 16 inches long boards and do it to all the pallets that you have. For the size of the bed that he’s making, he needs 50 to 56 pieces of board.
Note: While cutting the boards, they don’t need to be perfect because you can trim them later on to make all boards uniform in size.
Step Number Two: Next, cut a couple of thinner but longer parts for the braces. They will act as a support to the 16″ boards once they’re grouped into 4 sides for the whole plant bed.
Note: Even though Prigioni is making a 4ft by 8ft bed, he made 6 4ft sections because making the 8ft sides will be tough to do. He is just connecting 2 4ft sides to make 2 8ft sections.
Step Number Three: Once you are done making the sides, brush them with linseed oil. Its sole purpose is to preserve the wood so they get to last for a couple of years more without deteriorating.
Step Number Four: Prepare the space where you’re putting the raised plant bed. Lay down all the sides and bring them together to see how it’s going to like. Have a block of wood and make it a connector to bring 2 sides together.
Step Number Five: After joining all sides together and forming the actual 4ft by 8ft raised bed, bring in 2×4 wood rails and make them as additional bracers that go on top of each side. They will give the bed a sturdier finish especially if the top part is a little wobbly.
Step Number Six: It’s then time to fill in the bed! First, go with homemade compost, it doesn’t only add nutrition to the soil but also a space saver. After all, you’re filling in a 16 inches deep bed.
Step Number Seven: Next, fill the bed in with some black leaf mulch (which he also got for free from a local recycling center). Once it reaches 3/4 of the bed, add mushroom compost. If it’s totally filled in, level the bed before planting.
Note: If you prefer to fill in your bed with different types of compost, then feel free to do so. Choose whichever is available for you to use.
Step Number Eight: Finally, plant your favorite plant in, it can be a seed or a baby plant. Just make sure to give all the food they need like sunlight and water.
If you plan to improve your garden without spending much then this raised plant bed idea is best for you. You can also visit Prigioni’s YouTube channel for more gardening tips.
Watch the video below to see how this raised bed plant is actually done!
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