This photo is from the Fall which is why there are frost-killed plants in the near bed. The hoop house wood beds took the longest to be constructed primarily because of the dilemna of the metal on the inside of the bales. We would have had to remove the bales to put wood against the wire and I had already planted the bales. So we did a three-sided wood bed on both rows of straw bales.

At first this partial construction was not a problem; but as time passed, the straw that turned to humus fell through the wire as rain moved it and that left a layer above the landscape material for weeds to take hold.

Also, I wished I had extended each bed with partial bales so that the wood would have reached the entire length of the metal instead of leaving that 'corner' on the outside. It is a pain to mow/weed whack and while I tried planting things directly into the ground, the weeds always out grew everything.

Here is the U-shaped bed fresh with wood perimeter.

The 2x6 boards had been painted and I didn't want the painted side on the outside which was just as well, because the process of removing those boards often required the hubby to hack into the wood around the screws in order to remove them.

By putting the painted side inward, we also ended up with a smooth, relatively uniform face. I had planned to paint the wood, but gave up on that very quickly. Yes, the water and soil and all will eat away at the wood, but they will last a good, LONG time before they need to be replaced.

And I like the look of the weathered wood (you'll see that in the later photos).

This also explains why you see green and white paint on the top edges and on the inside of the top boards.

Here is the U-shaped bed in the Fall. Already the straw has composted and sunk quite a bit.

I prepped and used this bed again for personal food plants.

I don't know if it is visible in the photo, but the 'arms' of the U sank less than the 3-bale end. I surmise that being one bale wide kept the temps and moisture less comfortable for composting.

Here are the four (4) long/wide beds; three (3) of which have wood perimeters. I'm don't remember why the hubby wasn't able to get the fourth bed encased... time or lack of old deck wood (or both).

Originally, the hubby was using support stakes on the outside of the beds since soil is heavy and pushes OUT against the boards. (See the beds in the back yard by the porch for examples of this.) But those outside support stakes are a pain to work around, so he agreed to put the supports on the INSIDE and the boards are screwed into the supports. There are also corner stakes that the boards are screwed into.

These beds are very sturdy and, since they are screwed together, they COULD be deconstructed and moved if we wanted to do that.

This is the closest long/wide bed (to the U-shaped bed) in the Fall of 2017 (also know as bed 1).

I decided that I would use these long/wide beds for strawberries. Since strawberry plants self-reproduce using runners, it would be difficult to add soil as the bales compressed/decomposed. I decided I would simply wait for the beds to settle before transplanting the strawberries. And since I was waiting, I decided to NOT water and fertilize the straw. This made a HUGE difference in that the straw took SO MUCH LONGER to decompose and I ended up waiting several years instead of being able to transplant the following year. I tell you this so you can learn from my mistakes.

There is a different page about transplanting the strawberry plants. Click here to go there.

Here are the other two long/wide beds in the Fall of 2018. The hubby (as you can see) was once again working on encasing that last bed. (We had wood from replacing the north porch this time.)

Unfortunately, there was definitely not enough wood and he was not able to finish that bed. The wood you can see sitting on top of the finished bed ended up staying there for a couple of years and that was problematic. Wasps made nests, weeds took over and that made working around bed 3 difficult.

The straw bales of the UNencased bed (4) simply decomposed and I had to be careful mowing and weed whacking around it. This bed taught me that I should have removed the wires holding the bales together early on. Rusty wire in soil that you are trying to plant into is like asking for tetanus. I decided to use tools to find and remove those wires (in all the beds) before we added soil.

This image was taken in the Fall of 2019.

We ended up with a nice pile of soil from the dig around the garage to put in french drains (click here to go there). It was saved in a big pile just this side of that large white ShelterLogic structure on the right side of this image specfically because I wanted to use it to fill the raised beds.

So in the spring of 2019, I (and eventually the hubby) moved about a quarter of the pile into the beds that have wood perimeters.

I planted into the hoop house and U-shaped beds and that made it easier to keep those weed free. Unfortunately, this was not the case with the long/wide beds. There were seeds in that dirt and the weeds and grasses took over and I abandoned the beds for another year while the straw continued composting and everything settled.

In 2020, the hubby finally accumulated enough wood to enclose the fourth bed but we did not get around to putting dirt into it at that time, so it sat for a year hosting lots of weeds.

Also in 2020, I added dirt to the long/wide bed closest to the U-shaped bed and transplanted about 1/8th of the strawberries. I did it the usual way: one plant at a time, nicely spaced in the new bed with straw all around to keep the weeds down. That was a HUGE undertaking for me (because it required a great deal of stooping and bending over, both of which are really hard on my body -- which is the reason I wanted raised beds in the first place) because the original strawberry bed was only two (2) 2x6 boards high and I had to get on my knees to remove the plants from that bed. I decided we needed to figure out a different way to transplant the rest of the strawberries. We did the rest of the tranplanting in 2021 and you can see that process here.

This is what the raised beds looked like in the Spring of 2021. The hubby had finished moving the strawberries.

In case I neglected to mention it already, I refer to the long/wide raised beds as beds 1, 2, 3 and 4 (going outward from the U-shaped bed toward the small ShelterLogic at the left of the image).

You might also note in this image that we cut out all the wood supports from between the beds of the hoop house. The wood supports caused major headaches to control the weeds and, since the soil filled beds keep the hoop in place, they were no longer necessary.

With the area under the hoop house clear of obstruction, I can drive the riding mower under and through it to keep the grass/weeds down.

This image shows you the two remaining beds that the hubby built INSIDE the hoop house in 2022. These beds resolve the problem with the exposed wire and losing soil. Because the bittersweet provides shade most of the year, I can plant early-morning-sun and otherwise shade-loving plants in those two beds.

FYI - I can still drive the mower through with the new inside beds in place. (YIPPEE)

I also thought you might like to see the American Bittersweet growing on the hoop house. It is planted on the inside on both sides at the north end.

You can also see the strawberries in bed 1 in this image.

And here (finally) is bed 4 completely filled with soil ready to be planted.

Ironically, the wood we scavenged for this bed from the north porch rebuild is 2x10s and you can see what the rest of beds would have looked like if we had stuck with the original plan.

I invested in a rolling seat that puts me at exactly the right height to work in the beds without having to kneel or bend over so far.

This green rolling seat is actual my second rolling seat. The first one was red and an impulse purchase at a tractor supply store. I did not investigate the strength of that product and while it was great for a couple of years, the seat broke off from the screw/bolt and made it unusable. (Off it went for metal recycling.)

This green one I researched and made sure of the quality before I ordered it. It is the same design (mostly) but more sturdy and with better wheels.

Here you see the hubby has just finished inflating the tires and I have put the (luxury purchase, LOL) cushion on the seat.

This rolling seat is 'steerable' because the front wheels are maneuverable by the handle (which in the photo is extended, but it can slide down to get it out of the way). I make sure the wheels are properly situated so I can move it along without having to get up (for as long as possible.) The key, I have found, is to figure out how far away from the side of the bed the seat needs to be so my legs have enough room.

An extra feature is the round wire 'basket' on the back. A 5-gallon bucket fits into it nicely so you can put stuff you want to move around in it (too much weight will topple it).

And here you see one of very few photos of me. Even rarer than a photo of me is one where I am wearing shorts to work outside, LOL. I'm pretty sure I just threw my hat, boots and shirt over my inside summer clothes so I could see how the construction of the seat was coming along.

I am 5 ft 5-1/2 inches tall and I've found that the seat at the lowest setting is just perfect for me while working on the raised beds. The seat rotates on a screw/bolt to raise or lower the height.

Why the shirt? I have problems with sun on my skin so I wear a woven cotton long-sleeve shirt which also helps to minimize the need for sunscreen and bug repellent. Normally when I work outside, I also wear long pants, five-finger aqua footwear and gloves.