November 5, 2024

VIDEO: How to Build a Raised Garden Bed | Growing Food in Small Spaces S1 E1


This is the first episode in our growing food in small spaces series and it shows how to build a raised garden bed made from colorbond steel situated in a small city lot.

Raised bed gardening as vegetable gardens are amazing for smaller spaces and it’s surprising how much food you can grow in a bed such as this not to mention how easy it is to plant, weed, and maintain a high sided bed as you stand up with no bending over required!

The video shows 5 stages of making a raised garden bed: Positioning or sighting, Building, Filling, Planting out, and Protecting crops from Animals such as possums or birds using an easy cheap DIY fitted net.

Soil used: 35 bags of 25L garden soil mix; 5 bags of 25L garden compost (you will require more bags if not using hugelkultur method of organic waste in the base of bed). Good quality soil delivered by the trailer load would be cheaper but for ease of project and to ensure quality product we used bagged soil.

Birdies Raised Garden bed 8-in-1 information here: https://goo.gl/nhpkAH – if you are in the USA Birdies are working on getting a shipment of high sided beds to the US this coming spring. I advise you to email Birdies Garden Products to enquire and submit your interest if considering buying one of these beds.

This episode and video series were created with the help of Creator Queensland (a QLD Govt and YouTube initiative) and Griffith University.

The following student crew from LiveLabs helped create the “Growing Food in Small Spaces” series as part of their film course final assessment:

Scott Nolan – Director
Emma Adin – Unit Manager/2nd AD
Karlee Catalano – 1st AD
Sophie Cross – Camera
Phoebe Ireland – Data Wrangler
Tom Davison – Camera
Kenny Waterson – Sound Recordist
Hugo Hood – Production Assist
Patrick Mahon – Continuity

This series was certainly a great learning experience for me as well as being a fun project to help create – thanks to all who made this possible.

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Self Sufficient Me is based on our small 3-acre property/homestead in SE Queensland Australia about 45kms north of Brisbane – the climate is subtropical (similar to Florida). I started Self Sufficient Me in 2011 as a blog website project where I document and write about backyard food growing, self-sufficiency, and urban farming in general. I love sharing my foodie and DIY adventures online so come along with me and let’s get into it! Cheers, Mark 🙂

26 thoughts on “VIDEO: How to Build a Raised Garden Bed | Growing Food in Small Spaces S1 E1

  1. Do natural increase height system like Mobotallor Secrets really work and if so, how effective are they? I have heard several awesome things about this increase height method.

  2. Our new favourite show from Canada. We put in 2 raised brick grden beds with pipe drainage too. One is for vegetables and anlther berries. We got a large , tall garden bed made too.

  3. Love your videos Mark. I see you've filled up the last foot with Richgro garden soil mix (as well as a bit of compost and blood + bone). Does bagged garden soil mix do the job in raised garden beds like this? Some of your other videos recommend using manure/compost/fertiliser for the top layer. Thanks again.

  4. I do not get how this thin net can protect from medium animals. :-/ Even squirrel will chew through it in no time. And raccoons will remove your clips easily.

  5. Wow! Glad I came back to watch this first video in the series (started with the pallet wall one). I have been struggling with appropriate hoops and netting for seedling beds (raised or not) for a while now… bought a few packs of grow tunnels from Bunnings but the hoops are too small and weak and bend/break/disintegrate too quickly for my liking. And I hate the idea of having to buy more of them each year. Your pvc pipe/irrigation tubing solution is pure genius! Thank you, Mark! Love your work 🙂

  6. Hi Mark I know this video was in 2018 but I went to the site to purchase a raised bed and they don't supply south africa. Tried to send enquiry but unless you have a zip number in nz Australia it wo t go through. So sad. Can you suggest an international al outlet for me please?

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