Make a Raised Plant Bed Using Stone Blocks
Raised Plant Bed
I made a raised plant bed, or raised bed, to address my difficult growing conditions. My house is in Kenya near the beach on the Indian ocean. I face different challenges growing edible plants here than I would face growing edible plants at my home in Florida, U.S.
My soil is very sandy, so I am faced with the task of learning to grow edible plants in less than ideal conditions.
The nutrient content of my sandy soil is poor, and the wind coming off the sea is salty. But I have an even bigger problem. There are coconut trees where I live and the roots are really invasive.
Coconut roots travel far searching for water and they end up growing into my raised plant bed. They then rob nutrients from my plants and choke off their roots.
So I have to make a raised plant bed so I can put in a good soil mixture to supply my plants with a nurturing growing environment. But I also have to construct it so it can stop or minimize the coconut roots entering underneath the plant bed.
Stone Blocks for the Walls and Cocoto Rocks for the Floor
I have decided to construct the raised plant bed using stone blocks. These blocks are readily available where I live on the coast of Kenya, because there are many stone quarries around the area. The price for the blocks are much less expensive than wood planks.
Each block costs 23 bub, or 23 cents USD. I had some blocks available so I just bought an additional 100 blocks. The total cost was 2300 Kenyan Shillings, or $23 USD. One wood plank measuring 7 feet long, 12 inches high, and 1 inch thick would cost me 1500 Kenyan Shillings, or $15 USD.
I would have also had to buy wood blocks to anchor the planks together. All together is would have cost me more than and additional $100 USD.
I didn’t use anything to secure the stone blocks, so I stacked them staggered on top of each other to give them more support. The blocks should be heavy enough to stop soil from knocking the blocks over.
Please view the video above for more information and also to see how I built the raised plant bed.
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