How to make the raised beds

I've had a couple of questions on how we made the raised beds for my garden, so I thought I'd post how Mark made ours.

Get four 8-foot long boards at Lowe's, Home Depot, whatever. If you have a few old boards laying around in the yard you can use those. I think the ones we used are about a foot wide, but don't quote me on that. You can get longer if you want a bigger bed, but that was as big as we can manage in our yard. The bed we built has room for 4 tomato plants and a cucumber plant in the back row, probably 2 more rows of short plants. They are a bit crowded, but it cuts down on weeds.

While you are there, get some of those metal board corner connector things. I'm sure what they are called, but someone who works there can probably help you find them.

Cut two of the boards in half. I think they will do this for you at Home Depot as they always offer to cut boards for me. But, since we have a couple of fancy saws, hubby did it himself. Use the connectors to connect two long boards to two short boards, making a rectangle. Do the same with the second set of boards, then put it on top of the first and use the straight connectors to make it stay steady. I think you can do this all with nails, but those fancy connector things just make you feel like a real carpenter, ya know?

Fill the beds with lots and lots of dirt. Preferably good dirt, but whatever you can get is fine. Like 5,000 wheelbarrows full or so should do it. Then, you are done.

Oh, and don't buy the treated lumber. It looks pretty, but can leach stuff into the soil and contaminate your veggies. We used plain old pine. I'll post a picture of the sandbox later to show you what color the veggie box will be in a couple of years.