Raised beds for veg

I trimmed all the joints a couple of weekends ago. Now it's time to start laying the foundations. One down, three to go.
I plan on reusing the shuttering, so I'll spend tomorrow treating the sleepers with preservative, while the concrete cures.

 

I got the mixer out again on Monday, making the most of the sunny weather. Foundations in for the second bed now. Of course I under-estimated how much concrete I'd need, so there'll have to be another trip for more cement and ballast, but that's par for the course.

I know this may seem overkill, but each bed is at least a tonne of soil held in place by around a quarter-tonne of oak sleepers; and when I get round to redoing the patio, the beds will fit into that. So I'm aiming to make this rock solid, and a bit better finished than the typical veg bed.

 

One down, three to go!

Last year was all about the concrete foundations, and getting all the wood good to go. This year was assembly time for the two simple triangles. Or at least it was going to be, but other factors intervened (motorhome DIY!) so I decided to focus on getting one finished.

Over the summer, I planed the sleepers smooth, including chamfers on all edges so they're comfortable to sit on. And I gave them a thorough dose of wood treatment, and the outer faces got a linseed oil, turps and beeswax finish again.

The sleepers are secured to the base with M10 threaded rods. The grand plan was to be able to drop the rods down the carefully-drilled holes to screw into the anchors in the concrete. (Which in turn had had to be epoxied into place, because hammer-in concrete anchors turn out not to be that secure. But epoxy is.) Of course that plan failed on contact with the enemy, so the backup plan was to assemble each tier on props and slowly lower an entire tier down the rods.


Once it was all down and nuts tightened to fasten everything in place, it was time for a layer of DPC inside to stop the soil rotting the wood.

And then finally fill'er up!

 

Done a good job there.

 

It looks good Graham, nice and solid.