Used to do a regular veggie garden that covered a lot of area. After the kids left home I continued for a couple of years, then decided I was growing way more than I could use and the people I gave the surplus to acted like I should even can the stuff for them. I quit doing the veggies and would buy a bit from the farmers markets in the area. Seemed like I was always a dollar short and day late and tomatoes were soft and mushy when I was ready for them, corn you would think were gold nuggets on a cob so I started growing things in pots. Tough to grow corn in pots as the wind kept blowing them over when they got so high so I decided to dabble in raised beds. Started with just one 4'x8'x8" bed filled with soil I got from the woods. I raised tomatoes, squash and egg plants the first year to see how it went. Went way beyond my expectations, I have never raised tomatoes with 6' & 7' tall plants before and the soil in my old regular garden was the finest I could make. Wow these raised beds are great I think, and easy to protect early season from frost and also late season too. First year got hit with tomato blight. I read all I could on it so removed all the plants from the bed, took them to my bury hole and buried them along with all the soil I removed from the bed later. Left the frame to freeze and thaw all winter, when spring came I mixes up a bleach solution and washed that frame several times with the solution and then plain dish soapy water and a final rinse and started over. I also built 2 more new beds with recycled lumber 4'x8'x 11" filled them all again with woods soil. They have worked well for me also. Today I am working on making a watering system where all the water goes in the beds. I discovered in 2014 that a water bottle on the end of a hose with holes worked best. Problem is water bottles are now cheaper made and do not screw on the end of a hose any longer. Al
My brother-in-law uses old refrigerators as his raised beds. He takes the doors off and lays them on their backs. He drills holes in them for drainage and fills it with a mix of soil, compost, cow manure, etc. It looks a little redneck, but he has awesome gardens! No bending over to weed, rabbits can't get in, etc. He's up to 7 or so of them now. He paints the sides camo to help them blend in. I think if you add inexpensive access to cedar to side them with they'd look pretty nice.
I have heard of all kinds of things used for raised beds. Guy I worked with years ago used tires for his potatoes and kept stacking them nearly all summer. When fall came he had oddles of potatoes from the tire stacks. Al
I use rough pine 2x12's for most of my raised beds, been doing this for ten years as the only clear spot on my land for a garden is over the top of my septic leach field. Can't dig it in. Lately I have been using cut-down 15-gallon white drums that I get from work, used to hold laundry soap and chemicals. They get rinsed out, cut down, and left to sit in the weather for a season, then they get used the following spring. I also have been using a lot of those "grow bags", basically 7 to 15-gallon 'pots' made out of non-woven geotextile. Have potatoes planted in them this year and hope to get a great yield. Some of these allotment gardeners on YouTube get 10 lb of potatoes or more out of a ten gallon pot with 4-5 seed potatoes.
Funny - over the weekend I put my old freezer (still working) out on the curb and a neighbor stopped by and tried to stuff it in his car. I offered to take it to his place. When I dropped it off, his wife was saying she didn't know what to do with their old, non-working freezer since the transfer station charges for it. I gave her that exact answer - take off door, lay it down, drill holes and use it for raised bed. The look she gave me was priceless.
Years ago I had something similar for watering my garden. It was bottle shaped, filled with what looked like a plastic scrubby and had holes in it. It worked good as a soaker for small spots.
There is a guy over on the coal forum that has raised beds with hydroponic feedings. He wanted to make the point that coal was not that bad so he used coal as a medium to plant his food in. The plants got so big they nearly lifted his greenhouse off the foundation. Coal of course is carbon, and I have been wondering myself if biochar is everything they claim it is. I am thinking about making some up for our garden just to see. They say the first year a garden just starts, the second year it just spreads, and the third year it shines! There is some truth to that I think.
