A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Brick raised bed

Hello all. First time here and I am getting right down to some frugal buisness:-)

My hubby and I bought our first house. Yeah! I have a TON of brick in the garage and I want to use it to construct 4 foot by 8 foot raised beds. I want them to be about 6 to 8 inches deep.

I'll be using them for vegetable gardening. I have been planning for years to square foot garden once I had my own back yard and I am ready to get started. However I have the expense of purchasing soil and seeds and etc etc for my new yard so I want to know if it would be feasible to construct the brick beds without mortar. They will only be about 3 to 5 bricks high so Maybe???? I eventually want all my raised beds to be stone not brick so they would only have to last a year or two or three so I would rather not go through the time and expense to mortar them but I also don't want them to topple over in two months. Whatcha think?

Hmmm... my experience with brick is.... over ONE high... and it wont stay in place! That doesn't mean that you should give up on the idea tho! There is a way of stacking them kind of in a herringbone pattern that I saw a guy use once that he managed to build a whole wall out of them without mortar. I will talk to him and see if I can't glean a bit of info on how he done it!

Would a couple tubes of retaining wall adhesive (uses a caulk gun) be sufficient to help her brick stay in place? Not quite as permanent as mortar, and still not too much $.

You know what, that might just work. After all, I only need just enough to hold it togather. I will check it out thanks!

Good idea on the bricks...weve got tons and I never new what to do with them (Im not that creative). Let us know how the adhesive works out. Would quickcrete work I wonder?

lay out the first layer so that they are herringboned and pack the soil up against them well, then put the next level on, again, herringbone it. little trick: don't have the front edges exactly even - have the second level back about a 1/2 inch...make sure to pack the soil in well. do the same with any additional levels you want to add.

just make sure to pound the soil in to support the bricks! i've used a hammer or mallet to make sure i get it in well...and over time, with watering, the soil will firm up even more.

you can even put a bit of soil in between the bricks and tap them together to firm them up...i mean the bricks on each level; just to keep them connected to each other if one gets knocked, it's less likely to move if the dirt is there holding it in place - you shouldn't need to put dirt between the levels.

you should be fine for a couple of years.

You said your soil is very clay right? It may be gooey enough to act as a mortar alongside the put the next row back a bit idea.

Well, I declare! I'm glad I am in such a smart group of people. I never thought to maybe use the clay!

I'll try anything once :-)

Jocyln thank you for the tips, I'll try that.

Im a bricklayer by trade, please dont stick them together with glue and mud
just remember the story about the three little pigs