The process of building the raised beds was quite long. Unfortunately, I tend to remember only after I’m done that I should have taken pictures. If you’re interested in the process, you’ll have to struggle through my writing.
Once again, the process of building the raised beds started with the garden layout drawing. I used the drawing to establish the outer dimensions of the beds based on inner dimensions of 4’x35′.
The next step was to layout the beds in the yard. I got a reel of mason line and some wooden stakes. Placing the stakes outside of the beds, I lined up the mason line to define the outer border of the beds. It was a painstaking process since the only way to correct an error in placement was to mess with the stake. Then, I followed the line to mark the grass using a can of inverted marking spray paint and took down the mason line.
With the outer edge of the beds marked, I got my string trimmer and used it to cut the grass along the paint lines and again about 4″ in. These cuts defined the grass that would need to be removed prior to placing the timbers.
Using a trenching shovel, I slowly worked down the cut path and removed the sod. The remnants were simply moved to the middle of what was to be the bed.
With all of the sod removed, the real work of placing the timbers began. Since the timbers were generally not straight, I began by sorting the timbers and selecting the straightest of the timbers for the first course. These were laid into the grooves created by the removed grass. The first course being the most important, a lot of time was taken to level the timbers individually and across the entire assembly. A couple of cuts through a timber produced the short members needed on the ends, and the process continued around the entire bed.
Before moving on to the following courses, I sorted the timbers, several times. The straightest timbers having already been used for the first course, the least straight timbers were set aside to be cut for end and short pieces. The remainder were generally sorted to put the straighter timbers toward the bottom and the least straight at the top.
Then stacking began. There’s a lot of bending over involved in picking up a timber, moving to it’s position and setting it down. Even in prepositioning the timbers, there’s a lot of back breaking movements. Once the timbers were stacked, they needed to be secured together. I had purchase a bunch of galvanized spikes and a long drillbit for a pilot hole from Home Depot since I had read they were the fastener to use. They weren’t. It takes a lot of effort to drive in a 10″ spike, but the worst part was that the shock waves from the hammer impacts knocked my beautifully stacked bed down. There was really no way to correct or adapt to the damage I was doing as I worked. I gave up for the evening and found a new fastener.
The new fastener I chose was FastenMaster TimberLok 10″ steel screws. These don’t require a pilot hole (though I drilled a short one anyway to get it started) and were plenty long enough to do the job. Once the right fastener was chosen, the rest of assembling the bed went very quickly. I just had to do it all three times.
