Tag: Garden

DIY: Frame it All System Raised Bed Install Replacement

writ­ten 4/13/2024, updat­ed 4/13/2024

Overview

What

Replac­ing an old, rot­ted, worn wood raised bed bor­der with a food-safe com­pos­ite board made from “38% HDPE plas­tic and 62% cer­ti­fied sus­tain­ably sourced wood fibers” which is equiv­a­lent to 97 sin­gle-use plas­tic bot­tles. Bug resis­tant, no rot.

Time and Effort

Depen­dent on con­di­tion of yard and slope

Time: 4 hours

Effort: Easy — Mod­er­ate

Materials and Cost

Gar­den Tools, Soil, Rock, Rub­ber Mal­let, Gloves, Elbow Grease

Prod­uct: 4′ x 12′ Raised Gar­den Bed

Options: 2″ thick­ness, 11″ height, Weath­ered Wood col­or

Price: $429.99 — $64.49 (coupon) + free ship­ping = $365.50 (no tax)

  • In com­par­i­son, Paver wall retain­ing blocks like, Mini Beltis 3 in. H x 8 in. W x 4 in. D Ash­land Con­crete Retain­ing Wall Block, need 96 total blocks to get 2 cours­es, but only sits 6in high. Would need 4 cours­es of pavers to reach a sim­i­lar 12″ height (com­pared to the 11″ of the Frame it All sys­tem).
  • Cost: 96 blocks x $1.38 = $132.48 (6″ height)
  • Cost: 192 blocks x $1.38 = $264.96 (12″ height)
  • Cheap­er until you remem­ber you need paver base, lev­el­ing sand, and to get almost 200 retain­ing blocks to your house. Then to heft them to the gar­den
  • Pros of paver wall blocks: Won’t break if hit­ting with lawn mow­ing equip­ment or oth­er rocks, bug and ani­mal proof, eas­i­er to work with uneven ter­rain, can be replaced eas­i­ly or moved/changed or expand­ed

Installation

HERE is a link to the prod­uct page that includes the video walk­through of instal­la­tion

HERE is their offi­cial YouTube chan­nel

Before and After

Preparation

Remov­ing Rebar: the orig­i­nal, rot­ten wood was held in with at least 15 pieces of rebar of vary­ing lengths. How do you remove rebar stuck in the ground? Turns out it’s real­ly easy: Vise Grip Pli­ers.

Lock it on, give it sev­er­al spins, then spin while pulling upwards. It real­ly is as sim­ple as that. Some pieces can be still stub­born, but just give it a few more spins, some back and forth, and nice steady pres­sure upwards.

Old pieces of wood and rebar removed, as well as some way­ward patio pavers. Then lay­ing out the com­pos­ite boards, and the bulk of the entire job: lev­el­ing, fix­ing the bed plot, remov­ing weeds and rocks, relo­cat­ing any exist­ing plants. Mus­cle and elbow grease, FTW

Assembling

Yay! Final­ly assem­bling the frame sys­tem, but don’t be fooled into ease! Now for the tech­ni­cal part.

There is one Stack­ing Brack­et kit for every 2 boards. Mak­ing sure to alter­nate the up and down ori­en­ta­tion of the brack­ets on either end, secure them to the boards using the lit­tle plug. Frame-it-All rec­om­mends either using your palms or a mal­let to push it in, but you’re guar­an­teed to want to use a mal­let unless your hands are made of some­thing hard­er than mine (kept get­ting my palm flesh stuck between the plug and the brack­et…) espe­cial­ly the more boards you’ll be secur­ing.

I’d rec­om­mend attach­ing brack­ets to just enough boards for the bot­tom lay­er for now because installing the cross­bars will mess things up if you try to do them all at once.

Fol­low­ing Frame-It-All’s instruc­tions, it’s time to dry fit the low­est lev­el togeth­er by plac­ing the stakes in upside down. This is a super impor­tant step that you do not want to skip because it allows you lev­el the pieces and see how it all lines up.

Sim­i­lar­ly, it’s extreme­ly impor­tant to dry fit the cross­beam sta­bi­liz­ing boards… I wish I’d paid more atten­tion to this part because my pieces end­ed up juu­u­ust a lit­tle too far in the final install and it was a pain to try and fix at the end (when you’re tired! Or at least I was with all of the lev­el­ing I had to do of the bed plot).

When you’re ready, it’s ham­mer time!

Even with it all ham­mered into the ground, this is the best time to dou­ble check your even­ness and lev­el­ing. You can still lift the stakes and fix things. I had a lot of work to do in that depart­ment

And now on to the tricky part. It’s time to assem­ble the rest of the boards and brack­ets, but first, you have to under­stand the brack­et ori­en­ta­tion of the cross­bars using the 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­ets before assem­bling the rest of the brack­ets to the boards

Dry fit all the boards again, and using the 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et kits, fig­ure out the sta­bi­liz­ing cross­beam 3‑way ori­en­ta­tion. Attach the rest of the brack­ets to the boards after fig­ur­ing it out. If you mess up, it’s not a big deal. Just use a flat-head screw­driv­er in the lit­tle notch and twist out the plugs

Now to set up the 3‑way brac­ing brack­ets for the cross­bar. You need 1 Reg­u­lar Stack­ing Brack­et, 1 Mid 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et, and 1 Top 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et.

Ref­er­enc­ing the image above and ignor­ing the bot­tom lev­el, the left­most board has a Reg­u­lar Stack­ing Brack­et (bot­tom of stack), the cross­beam has a Mid 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et, and the right­most board has the Top 4‑Way Brac­ing Brack­et (top of stack).

**How­ev­er you end up ori­ent­ing them, make sure the top of the cross-board is flush with the rest of the boards**

When you’re ready, ham­mer them all in! Keep in mind that ham­mer­ing in the top might cause the bot­tom lay­er to sink into the ground a bit if you did­n’t use any paver/rock base. You can just lift up from the bot­tom and fix it.

Yay!

Fix any­thing you need to, and then cov­er up the holes with the Fin­ish­ing Caps!

Now, for some soil. I decid­ed to add some rock under­neath since the ground is basi­cal­ly all clay

ALL DONE. Sort of. I need some more soil.

Soil Quantity

In these images used 1.5cu. ft Gar­den Soil (Qty: 4) + 1 cu. ft Gar­den Soil (Qty: 4) + 0.5 cu. ft Riv­er Peb­bles (Qty: 2) = 11cu. ft total

I think I still need anoth­er 8 bags of the 1.5 cu. ft Gar­den Soil before I’m sat­is­fied, tak­ing into account set­tling from rain and weath­er. Mulch will go on top

Total Vol­ume: 12′ x 4′ x 0.92 ’ = 44.16 cu ft

My ide­al total gar­den soil vol­ume: 22 cu. ft (remem­ber the bed already had exist­ing soil, plus rocks, and mulch will top it)

Instruction Manual

NOTE: Step 4 is only for 3 and 4 tier lay­outs

DIY: Elevated Wood Planter

01/16/2022

What: Mak­ing a wood­en ele­vat­ed planter

When: April 2021

Sup­plies: Wood (lots of it), router, sander, wood screws, rub­ber feet (option­al), wood stain, wood seal­er, wood filler, drill, dri­ver, shop vac­u­um, clamps, cir­cu­lar saw, ruler/square, pen­cil, rub­ber mal­let, wood glue, weed bar­ri­er cloth

Time: a few days’ worth of time for me

The Plan­ning: I spent a LONG time research­ing and plan­ning for this project. It was very excit­ing for some­one who had nev­er done any­thing deal­ing with wood­work before aside from ran­dom­ly putting two pieces of wood togeth­er into a makeshift stool. Hours of image and prod­uct search­ing along with videos. Here are few of the images I found online that I ulti­mate­ly decid­ed on using as ref­er­ence:

The Process (in pic­tures!)

Get­ting Start­ed:

^This was the gath­er­ing and deci­sion stage where I had to decide how I want­ed to ori­ent the wood, made a few test cuts, mea­sured out some things, fig­ured out rough­ly the size I was going for and if it was rea­son­able giv­en the mate­r­i­al. Wood qual­i­ty and that kind of thing are new to me, so I was­n’t sure what to buy, and then just went for it. Ver­ti­cal or hor­i­zon­tal planks? In the end I went for hor­i­zon­tal for less wood cut­ting and less screws required. My sis­ter has a pre-made planter she bought with ver­ti­cal planks, and it was­n’t secured, so some­how squir­rels dug into them and knocked them all out. Not hap­pen­ing with this planter.

Router Work:

^Very fun to use a router and it was very first time, to boot! I found out that router bits are very sharp, that rout­ing makes a MASSIVE mess and should be done out­side, if pos­si­ble (still find­ing saw­dust in every sin­gle nook and cran­ny of the base­ment), and there’s a rea­son why router tables are a thing. I would def­i­nite­ly use a rout­ing table the next time if I could.

Frame Assem­bly:

^As you can see, I don’t have a very large base­ment at all. Nei­ther do I have sawhors­es. I did­n’t even have enough clamps and had to impro­vise a lot of what I was doing. This was prob­a­bly the most frus­trat­ing part of the project, try­ing to weed through all of the wood for straight wood, doing all of the math and mea­sure­ments, only to require revi­sion half-way through, then hav­ing the frame con­tin­u­ous­ly fall apart from lack of appro­pri­ate equip­ment, and deal­ing with the lit­tle imper­fec­tions here and there. It kind of looks like a bed frame, does­n’t it, though? I was so proud when I achieved the last pic­ture in this set.

The Slats

^Dry lay­ing of the wood and then using spare pieces of wood as spac­ers. Turns out that it was­n’t per­fect­ly even, but that’s okay, because who would notice? The spac­ing is for air­flow for the plants and water drainage. I debat­ed whether or not to place cor­ner slats, being afraid that water would just sit with­out being able to be drained, but went for it any­ways, con­sid­er­ing it would be sealed with the rest of the planter. I guess if I want­ed to get fan­cy, I could have grad­ed the wood a bit away from the cor­ners.

Remain­ing Assem­bly

^Lit­tle things like try­ing to fig­ure out how many and where to place screws with­out them over­lap­ping or break­ing the wood. Not too many, but not too few. Where would it be best of lift the hefty thing espe­cial­ly when it’s full of wet soil? It was very dif­fi­cult and painstak­ing to cut the top trim and secure the 4 cor­ners. Then rout­ing those to a smooth edge and sand­ing it all down to smooth­ness but also to rid of the pen­cil marks. My lack of prop­er clamps came back to haunt me with the top trim. Then wood filler to fill in the holes and more sand­ing. This part took a huge chunk of the time and made a mas­sive mess. But it’s most­ly done! And it looks good!

Stain and Seal

^ Yay! Then I decid­ed to put feet on it because I did­n’t want the wood to just sit on the ground soak­ing up water. That’s where one of the leg pieces that was full of knots con­tin­ued to be the bane of the project. Also, I used the wrong screws. Make sure you’re using wood screws. It’s not shown, but I caulked around the rub­ber feet and the wood.

Fin­ished Prod­uct

^ Not shown in pic­tures, but you can see the weed bar­ri­er I line it all with so that the soil won’t fall through the bot­tom of the planter. Grand­moth­er = Very Hap­py. Me = Proud.

In Con­clu­sion: This entire project took me about 3 week­ends to do and hon­est­ly, by the end of it, I just want­ed to be done (espe­cial­ly because I end­ed up crush­ing my foot some­thing awful with some of the equip­ment ear­ly on). It cost me around $300 — 400 in equip­ment and sup­plies (most­ly because wood prices in 2021 were sky high) which puts me over the amount to just sim­ply buy one pre-made. On top of it, the sheer weight of pure wood is sub­stan­tial and some­thing I did­n’t real­ly con­sid­er when plan­ning the project. Nor was I plan­ning on so much left­over wood. One of the biggest prob­lems I ran into with it all was the qual­i­ty of the wood. SO MANY of them were too bowed or warped to work with and now they’re just sit­ting there being a fire haz­ard in my base­ment because it cost me so much mon­ey to begin with. How­ev­er, the process, the plan­ning, the doing, and then the recep­tion by my grand­ma, grand­pa, and oth­er rel­a­tives made it all worth it for me. I was and con­tin­ue to be proud of what I did despite the mis­takes and imper­fec­tions. The best part about it all is that I know that if I ever want­ed to attempt it or some­thing sim­i­lar in the future, then it will take much less time sim­ply because I know more about what I’m doing (and also because I the right tools now). I have oth­er ideas in mind (like a top for the planter and an out­side squir­rel-proof toma­to plant cab­i­net) that hope­ful­ly I can bring to fruition one day.