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

written 3/4/2024

Background

I wanted to try using smoking wood chips inside of the house because I didn’t want to pull out the smoker and the chimney starter, etc, and I just wanted to imbue smoke in half of a chicken. After an extensive online search on pages overrun by advertisements and liquid smoke, I decided to just wing it. Here are my notes:

So, is it Possible?

In a word: yes. If you don’t mind your house smelling like a smokehouse for a few days

**WARNING: Please exercise caution when dealing with fire, open flames, and charcoal. Have heat rated gloves, other fire precautions, tongs, etc. When dealing with charcoal, have a vessel or means to starve it of oxygen, and a fire extinguisher. ALWAYS make sure to dispose of refuse properly**

Materials

Small wood chip pieces

BIC flexible lighter

Small baking dish

Aluminum foil

Fire mat

Heat gloves

Fire starters

Baking dish larger than other dish

Equipment

XL Toaster Oven with 2 racks

Meat thermometers

Attempt Process

What’s needed is something that will continuously burn the wood chips. Since I have experience using a regular meat smoker, that knowledge came in handy
I decided NOT to soak the wood chips. I quit soaking my wood chips for the meat smoker to begin with. I’ve found that the smoke that comes off of wet wood is different from dry wood smoke, changing the taste of the meat. Plus, wet wood creates steam, which could be useful if you want it, but is easily achieved with just a small bath of water or apple juice. PLUS, I was already puzzling about how to keep the wood lighted in the oven without it being wet
I tried fire starters broken up into small pieces under the wood chips, but those fizzled out really quickly. Even trying to keep them smoldering by blowing on them wasn’t enough to light the wood chips despite them being really small (think cocktail smoking chips)
That’s when I realized that the foil-lined cooking dish I was using had no air flow whatsoever to maintain a flame. Even the BIC flexible lighter I was using kept going out while I was trying to light things
I tried lighting single pieces of smoking chips and then setting that into the pile, but that kept going out and it was surprisingly hard to light them on fire to begin with (I have no experience lighting campfires, fyi)
Tried multiple times to light the wood chips, but they would barely char even though the fire starter materials burned strongly around them
Considered whether or not having an open, uncontrolled flame in the oven was a smart idea. Came to the conclusion that it is not a good idea, so then a controlled flame would be necessary
So, what’s needed: a continual burn source that would not be an open, uncontrolled, flame… sounds quite a bit like: charcoal

These were my many attempts to light the smoker chips without charcoal and only fire starters. No success. Note the fireproof mat and foil covers

Added the charcoal pieces and they’re successfully smoldering. You can see how after 20 minutes of trying, none of the smoker chips were even charred from the firestarters

Ended up placing a few small charcoal pieces on top of the fire starters and wood chips
Made sure to get them ashed over outside so that the strong charcoal black smoke would not affect the meat so much
Placed aluminum foil overtop the small baking dish with holes large enough for convection air flow to continually feed the burning charcoal. Too small of holes just put out the flame instead. The foil also keeps any possible arching flames in check
Immediately, smoke emanated from the toaster oven, so made sure to open windows enough to create a crosswind. Smoke detector did not go off! Surprisingly!
Meat DID have smoked taste, especially on the parts closer to the exterior of the meat, and because the low and slow smoker cook was incorporated halfway through, much of the interior was quite soft, especially on the breast portion of the chicken
Caveat: The house smelled heavily like a smoker for several days
Figured out later that only 1 of the 2 pieces of charcoal I used had stayed lit which explains why that side of the chicken was more smoked than the other

What the small dish looked like the next day after everything cooled. You can see how everything around the spent piece of charcoal burned and therefore smoked. The right side had a piece of charcoal that did not successfully stay lit yet did manage to char the surrounding wood chips. Consequently, the left side of the chicken had a far stronger smoke flavor than the right side

Directions

These directions are not to cook it fully like a smoker, but rather just give it the flavor of smoke. You are welcome to add the smoke in increments, or as short or as long as you’d like. The key is to start the charcoal to light the wood chips, just like in a smoker. Disclaimer: While I used a toaster oven, I don’t know how or if using charcoal inside of one would cause damage.

Start heating up the meat in the Toaster Oven with meat thermometers to monitor the temps
Use 2 racks, placing the meat on the upper one
I used half a chicken at 350F
After about 15 minutes or so, prepare a small baking dish by double lining it with foil
Go outside, prepare a fire-safe station to start a fire (I use a fireproof blanket/mat made for underneath fire pits, had my heat gloves handy, some tongs are smart, and foil not only to cover, but to smother in case it goes crazy)
Place some fire starters (pulled apart tumble weeds, broken up starter cubes, or whatever) on the bottom and place a few small pieces of charcoal over top.
Light up the fire starters (chimney starters have lots of airflow on the bottom to feed the flame and direct the heat up into the charcoal, but here the charcoal is small and will start to catch fire quickly)
When the charcoal is burning (when you blow on it you’ll see it is red) and has a nice white ash on top, throw your chips on top of the burning charcoal
Poke some big holes into a foil sheet for smoke, fire control, and airflow to the coals. Too small and you’ll put out your fire
After around 30 minutes or when the meat reaches around 100F, lower the temperature to 250F
Cover your smoking dish with the holey foil, put on your heat gloves, and place the dish on the bottom rack under the meat
OPEN YOUR WINDOWS if you haven’t, ideally creating a crosswind through the house to help the smoke you’re creating and will create when you open the oven door
Monitor the cook for several minutes.
When it’s about 10-15 degrees from being done, remove the smoking dish, and increase the temperature of the oven again
SAFETY: Bring the smoking dish over to your fire station and cover it with a larger baking dish to smother the fire. I placed my small dish on an aluminum roasting pan, and then the larger dish on top of that
Once the meat reaches doneness, let it rest before eating
FIRE SAFETY: Make sure to allow everything in the dish to cool down for several hours, and then dispose of properly!! Do not just throw charcoal in the trash! You can cause a fire even hours later!!!

ENJOY!