The building and raised beds should last a good thirty years before they need to be replaced. The plastic will hopefully last ten years or more before it needs to be replaced.
First raised bed is under construction. Once the boards are nailed together, we rolled hardware cloth over the entire bottom of the raised bed and screwed it down, then flip the raised bed over. This will prevent ground squirrels from coming into the raised beds from underneath.
Using 2×10 cedar boards, various lengths, we are building the raised beds, two boards high, for a soil depth of 20 inches when they are completely full of dirt. The raised beds along the exterior walls of the greenhouse are going to be three feet wide.
Moved into position, this is the first row of the first bed. Dan then nailed it to the wall. Once these beds are full of dirt they will anchor the building to the ground, making it very stable even in high winds. The plastic might not survive but the building will.
End board for the second row is waiting to be joined to the longer side boards.
Once the second row of boards is all nailed together, it too is nailed to the wall. The weight of the boards will keep them together and the first half of the two beds on the north wall is now complete.
We will repeat this same process until all nine raised beds are completed.
Both raised beds are completed on the north wall of the greenhouse. The two raised beds are a total of twenty-eight feet long, and three feet wide.
We completed the south wall raised beds today as well, and tomorrow we have help coming to move dirt and start filling the raised beds. So we have five more to build, and hopefully within a few days everything will be all completed, except for the windows which have yet to be built and installed.
Getting closer 🙂
This is going to be great. Guess Dan has been thinking about all of this all winter. Glad you are going to get help with the dirt.