Building stackable raised beds

It's time to get some more beds made. The last lot of stackables are currently in use, so I need some more. This is how to make raised beds which you can stack as high as you want. Grab your weapons of choice.

Firstly choose your wood. It doesn't really matter about size with this guide, because it is applicable to any size, any depth and any combination of beds. The thing you need to look out for is consistency of construction. For my beds, I chose 1.8m gravel board (that's 6ft in old money). Now you could make the beds square, but for me I want my beds easily accessible so .9m wide is suitable. Simply chop them in two.

Next you need to make corners. You can use square posts, but I chose triangular posts since they seem to blend in a little better. Cut them the same length as the width of your bed boards.

When you have a nice pile of them...

... then you are ready to start assembling. This is where it starts to get tricky. If you were an expert craftsman and measured everything properly then you can fix everything together perfectly square and it should all be a nice tight fit. However this is cheap rough cut wood, cut by eye with almost no measurements. Cutting the boards in half was a rough guess, the cuts were not perfectly square since it was done with a hand saw. So nothing is at it's best so we need to take this into account when putting everything together.

The corner posts need to be screwed (or nailed) to the boards at a slight angle. Because the length of the posts is exactly the same as the width of the boards they need to be slightly offset to allow for the stacking of them. I find that pre-drilling the holes helps immensely.

Put two screws in to hold the post in place. There needs to be a consistent offset (I chose the length of a screw - top right) and the top part of the board should be level with the edge of the post and the other end of the post sticking out a small way, about 1cm is fine. What this will do is place the posts at an inward sloping angle to allow for any mis-measurement to be accounted for when it all comes together.

You could build the whole frame straight away, but I chose to make up a whole load of end-pieces first. Building in small sections makes things much easier.

It doesn't matter whether you choose the small lengths or big lengths as the main part of you beds, but when you make your choice, you stick with it throughout.

Now you need to build the bed itself. Take your other boards and do a similar offset when you add them. Using a table or saw-horse is essential when trying to put these together.

Again the top of the board should meet the edge of the board already attached to the posts. This means that the top of you bed is a consistent size (1.8m x 0.9m in my case). Whereas the bottom of the boards are now slightly wider, with about 1cm additional space all the way around. Your beds are now stackable.

All this was pretty easy except when you get disturbed on the plot. Fortunately today's disturbance was a welcome sight from a fellow allotmenteer and blogger. Jerry from the Allotment Gardener website dropped by.

We had a good old chat about allotmenteering and stuff. I suspect we may meet up again at other event around London. Especially the Sutton Chilli Fiesta.

Meanwhile in the greenhouse, Mr Mouse is trying his hardest to hide the sweetcorn seeds (left over from making popcorn) in the Sweet Pea seed tray.

We put the sweet corn kernels down as a kind of distraction to stop him getting at the courgettes and digging his way through the other seed trays. Well it seems he's just making a nuisance of himself now. Time for traps.

Not that the apple tree cares... it's just starting to come into blossom.