Welcome to Day 2 of my 30 Day Challenge! Yesterday, I wrote in my blog about the first step to starting a vegetable garden - designing your garden. If you missed it, check out my StreetArticles profile for a link to the Challenge.

Based on the size of our yard, the quality of our soil, the amount and variety of fruits and vegetables we wish to grow, and the amount of sunlight we receive in our preferred growing area, my husband and I decided that the design for our garden would be one large raised bed garden and various containers around our yard and deck for the rest of our plants.

So, our next step was to learn How to Build a Raised Bed Garden.

The Research

I initially learned about raised bed gardening and the benefits of it from people's pins on Pinterest. As I read about the many benefits of a raised bed garden, I knew this was what I wanted for my yard.

Between all the information I gathered on Pinterest, some great gardening websites, as well as some fantastic videos on YouTube, my husband and I felt we had enough information to build our own raised bed rather than purchasing one that was prefabricated.

We measured the area of our yard where we wanted to place the bed and decided a 6' by 8' bed was the right size for our area.

The Products

It was time to purchase our supplies, but we had a decision to make. How tall did we want our bed to be and what type of materials should we make the bed out of?

We narrowed our material options to build our raised bed down to four: natural wood, pressure treated wood, composite wood, or cinder blocks.

The concerns I had were that natural wood was not treated and therefore would erode the quickest, the chemicals used to pressure treat the wood might seep into my garden soil, composite wood was quite expensive, and cinder blocks posed a hazard to my children should they run into it during playtime.

So, after much research and debate we decided to use natural wood but chose cedar because it would weather the elements the best. Since cedar was a little more expensive than some of the other options, we chose to make our bed only one 10" board high. Anything that has deeper roots, we will plant in containers.

The Construction

In addition to purchasing two cedar boards (which we had cut at the lumber yard for no additional cost), we also purchased one piece of 4" x 4" pressure treated wood (cut into 12" lengths) and a box of 2" exterior screws. We were ready to construct our bed!

We laid each piece of cedar on its 1" edge, to create a 6' x 8' bed. In each corner, we placed one piece of 4" x 4" x 12" pressure treated wood. This made the raised bed more stable and provided us with a thicker surface to drill the screws into.

Each piece of cedar was attached to the pressure treated wood by two screws on each side, one at the top and one at the bottom. We predrilled the holes before adding the screws, which made it much easier to put the bed together. All in all, we used 16 screws.

What We Learned From Building a Raised Bed

While we spent a lot of time researching the best way to build a raised bed and the best materials to use to make it, it was actually very simple to construct.

Once the raised bed was in place, we realized that we should have made it 4' in width instead of 6' because it was difficult to stand outside the bed and reach the center of the raised bed.

To resolve this problem, we decided to create a path down the center of our bed using cement blocks to enable us to reach all parts of the bed with ease. While this was not part of the initial design of our garden, it should work out well.

When we build our next bed, it will be 3' or 4' in width. The length will depend on the area in which we will be planting.

30 Day Challenge

For those of you who are following along with the challenge, I hope you are finding this information helpful. If you have any questions along the way, please post them here or on my blog and I will do my best to help you. See you tomorrow!