Sunday, 28 March 2010

Post 191: £15 B & Q Raised Bed

This weekend I had been planning on building an additional raised bed out of some leftover sleepers. Building with leftover sleepers is hard. They are heavy and tough. By chance I nipped in to B & Q to buy some Sand and spotted raised beds for £15. These looked like much easier work. And they were twice the area of the ones I'd bought for £60 last year.

This is what you get, basically two long planks (1.8 metres long) with spikes to drive into the ground and two end pieces (0.9 metres). The height is ~25 cm.  And a dozen screws.

There didn't really appear to be any right place of wrong place to put these screws - so no measuring required. It was all pretty easy to make into a box shape and then screw together. Unlike when I've attempted doing anything with sleepers, I could carry the whole built thing on my own. Which makes digging out particularly easy - line it up, see if it fits and dig a bit more until it does. It did grumble a bit about being knocked level with a mallet, but what can you expect for £15?

About an hour later - including time for digging and taking a little breather between digging, this is what I ended up with:
£15 very well spent I'd say! I'll have to bend over a bit more to do my gardening than with the ones I bought last year - but for £45 quid less and many hours less in the making I'm well pleased.

I'm now feeling very manly. It won't last, back to typing stuff in to tellies tomorrow.
Posted by VegBoxBoy at 16:08
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8 comments:

  1. Kath28 March 2010 at 19:50

    You Tarzan, Mrs VegBoxBoy Jane!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Choclette28 March 2010 at 19:57

    Thanks for the tip - that does sound cheap. Word of warning about sleepers, although sure you are aware anyhow, if coated with creosote probably not a good idea to grow veg in them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. VegBoxBoy29 March 2010 at 15:12

    Yeah, dead manly. Excuse me a minute while I make some mini rhubarb crumbles and get Mrs VegBox's T on the table.

    Choclette: Yes, I knew about creosote. I've not got re-claimed ones. They're sleeper sized but softer wood than proper sleepers. Still take plenty of sawing/drilling though.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rhizowen30 March 2010 at 07:18

    Call me anal - but what were the dimensions of your 15 quid bargain?

    ReplyDelete
  5. VegBoxBoy30 March 2010 at 08:26

    A fair point really - not much of a bargain if it's only teeny weeny is it?

    It's 1.8m long, 0.9m wide and ~25cm high - although it depends how much you bash it into the ground. 0.9 wide is a pretty good width - I'll still be able to reach easily into the middle.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hannah30 March 2010 at 11:35

    What a bargain! Have you seen the linkabord raised beds? I recently purchased some - they are easier to put together than the wooden ones and last longer because they don't rot.

    ReplyDelete
  7. VegBoxBoy2 April 2010 at 16:41

    I looked them up after your comment here. They look good, and a slightly bigger box is £23 with them. I've got a few other wood bits in my garden - so I'm probably best sticking to the wood ones.

    Thanks for the tip though.

    ReplyDelete
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