Raised beds - make or buy?

First you need to work out big you want your beds. Then source the materials. Old scaffold boards are brilliant (you may be able to get them for free as I understand they are only allowed to be used by builders for a certain length of time). Try builders, Freecycle, etc.

I make square ones from pallets. They are three boards high secured by screws to four upright lengths of wood and lined with plastic sheet.

My OH made mine - he' not that handy but it took him no time at all with scaffold planks

Building a raised vegetable bed | How to | Projects | BBC Gardeners' World

make your own,even if you have to shell out for deck boards it will still work out cheaper than ready made and you can make them the size & shape you want.
ps ditto the scaffold boards

I used old scaffold boards that I scounged from various sources..10 beds 4x18 and my strawberry beds are 10x4 feet that is..I am useless at DIY but found these easy and I am 65....it is so easy once they are settled in and I grow everything in them

Where does everyone get their scaffold boards from? I tried ringing and there's a man selling them nearby for £6.50 a board!!

It'd be cheaper for me to buy decking boards

ring round theres a massive marked for S/H boards now and timber prices are rising, we've just had a bulk load delivered to site for £4 each not bad for a 13' length, a 13x4 bed works out at less than a tenner

As Rustylady says, scaffolding planks have a sort of 'use-by' date and it's quite cheeky the prices some scaffolders will ask, as they would only be chucking them out anyway. After 'phoning around a few, we got ours for £3 each and have used them for all our beds. They're very sturdy and the ideal depth (9"). If you've got room for 4m long beds, you can use them as they come and you only need to cut them up for the end pieces.

Its a question of cash I guess. When I made mine I had none, so mine are all made from wriggly tin that I was given for free. I have 5 or 6 (cant remember) beds of differing lengths, including one for my asparagus, and they are all made from it.
I grant you they dont look particularly pretty, but that was never my aim, and the fact they cost me nothing makes them beautiful in my eyes.
Over the next couple of years I will hopefully change them to either red brick or timber, but the free wriggly tin has served me well up to now.

Has anyone tried building high raised beds?
I'd like to build them maybe 3' high --- if I use vertical corner supports d'you think I could just use say 3 pieces of scaffolding lined up on top of each other?
Or does anyone have any easier/cheaper/better ideas?

I have had my plot 2 months now and most my work so far has been making raised beds. The cheapest bed I have made so far involved reusing wooden pallets, if you can grab hold of wooden pallets easily and freely enough grab yourself a utility/service bar from B&Q for around £5-£7 to break them apart, those with 2 nails are easier to prize apart, anything with 3 or more nails I wouldn't bother with as you end up with more breakages than anything else.

I have 3 other beds made of treated paving board from Wickes, they work out at under £3 for a 6' length. My beds are mainly 6' x 3', two planks heigh with support posts in each corners and they work out at less than £20 each. You would get two half the height in Dobbies for £40. If you can make them from pallets for free, your quids in. If you can't get the pallets and want to build them, then it just depends on what you are paying for your materials.

A good tip is to line the inside of your raised beds with plastic sheeting, and give them a good coat of environmentally friendly wood paint. They should last you a while, and in the long run be a sound investment.

As my beds are of a fair height, I have had to fill them up somewhat, that is also something worth considering. Well sieved top soil with a desired mix of sand/compost/manure depending on what you are growing should give you an excellent growing medium.

If you have drainage problems like I do, then raised beds will give your crops added protection.

Hope that is of some help, if you want me to demonstrate the building of a raised bed for you on my blog, just leave me a comment.

I have sourced a few unwanted pine/timber doors and bookcases through my local Freecycle community and am planning to cut the doors down to size (well the hubbie is anyway!) and use the strips to make raised beds.

I am hoping the doors won't crack as we saw through them but will have to wait and see. The bookcases should be an easy win.

I used 6x1 tanalised timber which for 8, 4m x 1.2m beds cost just short of £100 including 2 x 2 corner/stiffener pieces and delivery. Some people might think that's expensive but compared to bought ones I don't think it's too bad I'm hoping to get 10 years out of them because they're treated, the guy on the next lottie to me used 3x2 paving stones set on edge, tops held together with a thin angle iron called dexion, these are the bees knees they,re great to sit on and work, you don,t have to bend down and they,ll last for ever. Down side, sourcing them- Luke got his from the local council when they were changing pavements but they're bloody heavy to lift and 2 foot high beds take a lot of filling if you've got a lot of them.

We got a lorryload for *about* £100, and our site manager charged us £1 for each one. Super bargain