Excellent yield at minimal cost - tall beds

Working in the beds requires a lot of physical strength and time, and the harvest does not always correspond to the efforts made. Therefore, more and more summer residents are arranging high beds on the plots, which can significantly reduce labor costs and grow a good harvest.

Benefits of tall beds

A high bed is a box with a height of 10-15 cm and up to half a meter, which is filled with earth, compost, rotted manure. The dimensions and shape of the box can be any. Most often it is made rectangular. The width should be planned so that it is convenient to care for the plants. The usual width is 50–80 cm. The aisles between the beds are sown with lawn grass, covered with sand, sawdust or concreted. As a result, weeds do not grow in the aisles, the cut grass is used for mulching, and the whole garden looks beautiful and neat. This is far from the only advantage of tall beds in the country. There are many advantages here:

• any plot is suitable for arranging a garden, even completely unsuitable for agriculture;
• tedious digging and weeding is replaced by light loosening of the topsoil;
• high beds warm up faster in spring, which allows you to get a harvest much earlier and plant crops that do not ripen in a given area on ordinary beds;
• on a high mulched bed, weeds hardly grow, and water does not spill under the gardener's feet during irrigation;
• it is not difficult to make drainage on it, this is necessary when growing garden crops that cannot tolerate high groundwater;
• on the sides it is easy to strengthen the covering material to protect plants from frost;
• if they start up on the site moles or shrews, cover the bottom of the garden bed with a plastic mesh with a frequent mesh, and gluttonous pests will not get to the plantings;
• the bed itself is easy to disassemble for transfer to another place, resizing or repairing.

The convenience of a high bed will be appreciated by all gardeners, because in the process of work they do not have to bend almost to ground level.

Attach a wide transverse board at the ends of the bed, and you get a comfortable bench on which you can put your inventory or sit down to admire the results of your labors.

How to turn the disadvantages of tall beds into their advantages

The device of such ridges is most useful in a humid cool climate. But in the arid southern regions, their advantages are not so obvious - the earth in a raised box overheats and dries up faster. This is their main drawback. Nevertheless, even in such conditions, the construction of high ridges will be justified if the soil on the site is infertile - stony, clayey or sandy. The overheating protection box is built of light-colored materials and filled with imported earth. In the midday heat, a white cloth or agrofiber cloth is stretched over the box. This canopy reduces the temperature of the soil and air in the garden and reduces water evaporation.

In the southern regions, construction from inexpensive natural stone - shell rock is widespread. If you build bumpers from it, the bed will last a very long time, and the soil in it will be cool in any heat. This building looks exceptionally beautiful.

See for yourself how attractive the tall beds in the photo, built in the country house from natural stone, look attractive.

What materials are suitable for construction

Tall beds don't have to be so monumental. Almost any building materials are suitable for their device. The main thing is that they do not let water through and keep their shape.

Tall slate beds are popular. The slate does not rot, is water-resistant, and hardly heats up in the sun. To equip a raised ridge, it is not necessary to buy a new slate, it is quite suitable removed from the roof after its repair.

It is even easier to make tall beds from plastic panels. Unlike slate, plastic does not crack from a light impact, and installation does not require great care. The light-colored plastic border around the edges of the garden bed looks neat and attractive.

High beds in the greenhouse are very convenient. Already in April, they can harvest the first radish harvest.

Crop rotation in greenhouses is always difficult, since they are usually used to grow a limited set of vegetable crops - tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants. Therefore, they often have to change the soil. It is much more convenient to do this in high beds.

How to make tall beds of boards with your own hands

If the idea of ​​building tall beds with your own hands inspired you, step-by-step instructions will help you do everything without mistakes.

To build a wooden box for a high bed 4000x60x30 cm in size, we need:

• edged board 2.5 cm thick and 15 cm wide - 18.4 running meters;
• galvanized square pipe or corner 2x2 cm;
• self-tapping screws.

You also need to prepare tools - a saw, a screwdriver, a grinder, a drill, a square, a pencil.

We measure 4 segments of 4 m for the long sides of the box and 4 segments of 0.6 m for the end sides and cut them off.

The sawn boards should be covered with an antiseptic on all sides and allowed to dry completely. Means "Firebioschit", "Senezh", "Pinoteks" and others will do. Without such processing of wood, tall beds of boards will not last long.

We cut the metal profile with a grinder into 0.4 m segments for the corners of the box and 0.6 m for the long sides of the screed. The screeds must be done every 1–1.5 m so that the bed does not burst with earth. For one box, 4 pieces of 0.4 m are needed for the corners. For screeds, you will need about 4 sections for the vertical screed and 2 more for the horizontal. Horizontal segments are fastened to vertical ones at the level of the top board.

We drill holes in the profile for self-tapping screws. There should be at least two of them for each board. After that, we attach the profile to the end boards with self-tapping screws. Next, you need to connect the assembled end elements with long boards in the same way. One side of the profile will be 10 cm longer than the width of the box. It will be sunk into the ground to stabilize the box.

On each long side, at the same distance, mark the places for the ties. Short segments are screwed to the boards, and short ones are fastened with long ones. Each tie is similar to the letter "P", screwed with vertical bars to the long sides of the box.

If a high bed is planned to be covered with a film or other covering material, the structure is supplemented with arcs. The most reliable ones are metal, so that they can withstand the weight of tied up tomatoes or cucumbers. For this purpose, an iron bar with a diameter of 8 mm and a length of at least 3 m is used. Each piece of the bar is shaped into a semicircle in its central part, leaving the ends straight. Arcs can be constructively connected with ties by fastening them with staples.

The finished structure is transferred to a permanent place, which was previously released and leveled.

The tops of the arches, if desired, can be connected with a strong twine. So the covering material will hold better and it will become easier to tie up the plants.

Now you know how to make high beds in the country with your own hands. By the same principle, it is not difficult to make them from any other suitable material.

How to make a tall garden bed warm

We have already seen the benefits of arranging high beds in the country.But such a bed can be twice as effective if you make it warm. All thermophilic crops grow on such a bed faster and bear fruit better. The device of a warm bed resembles a layer cake:

• coarse organic matter is laid down - branches, leaves, bark;
• semi-rotten compost or manure goes to the middle layer;
• on top of the cake is covered with a layer of garden soil.

Under the top layer, organic matter begins to decompose with the release of heat, that is, heats the plants from below, from the cold earth. If you mulch such a bed after planting the plants, caring for it will be reduced to rare watering and harvesting, which will invariably delight you, because all plants love the warmth and abundance of organic matter in the soil.

Video instruction for making a high bed