Cinderblock Raised Beds
- Thread starter lupinfarm
- Start date
Farmfresh
City Biddy
I have several cinder block raised beds. In my backyard I have brick about 2 feet down where an old house that burned was raised and the bricks were piled probably into the old cellar (which is where my yard is located. When they build my house (in 1928) they put a retaining wall around the old brick pile (on two sides of my backyard) and heaped the subsoil from the basement dig on top of the brick. (A lovely grow medium to be sure)
When we moved in the yard soil was slipping over the north retaining wall. I solved the problem by adding more blocks to that wall and adding three additional low walls to form about a 6 foot by 20 foot garden bed. Over the years I have added compost, mulch and let my chickens roam the space each winter until the bed has some pretty good growing soil in it. I grow about a dozen heirloom tomato plants, and other crops in their each year. You can just see the block at the bottom of the picture here.
At the "allotment" down the street the old man who gardened before me built three block beds. They are all about 3 feet wide. There is a stone wall with a RR tie retaining wall on one end that supports a parking area and the garden is located below the wall. There is a stair and a ramp area to get down into it. All along the stone wall side there is a nice block raised bed and along the RR tie retaining wall there is another less nice (more scrap was used) one. Where these two beds join a third little raised bed was added.
These beds are all filled with sand soil mix (probably to assist with drainage as well as to cut costs). They heat up quickly and do really well with certain crops.
One thing I have learned however is to only plant things that prefer an alkaline soil in those beds. The blocks tend to leach lime into the soil and acid loving plants just can't take it and soon parish. My big backyard bed does not seem to have so much of a problem with this.
When we moved in the yard soil was slipping over the north retaining wall. I solved the problem by adding more blocks to that wall and adding three additional low walls to form about a 6 foot by 20 foot garden bed. Over the years I have added compost, mulch and let my chickens roam the space each winter until the bed has some pretty good growing soil in it. I grow about a dozen heirloom tomato plants, and other crops in their each year. You can just see the block at the bottom of the picture here.
At the "allotment" down the street the old man who gardened before me built three block beds. They are all about 3 feet wide. There is a stone wall with a RR tie retaining wall on one end that supports a parking area and the garden is located below the wall. There is a stair and a ramp area to get down into it. All along the stone wall side there is a nice block raised bed and along the RR tie retaining wall there is another less nice (more scrap was used) one. Where these two beds join a third little raised bed was added.
These beds are all filled with sand soil mix (probably to assist with drainage as well as to cut costs). They heat up quickly and do really well with certain crops.
One thing I have learned however is to only plant things that prefer an alkaline soil in those beds. The blocks tend to leach lime into the soil and acid loving plants just can't take it and soon parish. My big backyard bed does not seem to have so much of a problem with this.
