Quick Tip Tuesday Lining A Raised Garden Bed With Wire Mesh

We just got back from our relaxing trip to Red Feather Lakes (pictures coming soon!). Although the rest and relaxation of the mountains felt incredible, today was time for hard work in the garden. If you use/want to use raise garden beds, it is a good idea to line them with wire mesh to keep burrowing and tunneling rodents (which we have a TON of here) from digging up and ruining your vegetables. Unfortunately, I didn't think about this until after we built and filled the garden. So my tip for you today is..... Line your raised garden bed with wire mesh BEFORE you fill it with soil!

The project today started with my handsome, handy husband digging out the soil from the garden bed. You can just line the bottom of the garden box, but I wanted it to be protected deeper into the ground. He dug it to about 15" deep.

Yes, I know you are supposed to be able to access more sides of a raised garden bed this size. We figured that out later. Having to figure out how to keep the dog out of it really didn't help with that plan either.

Yes, we have really nasty clay soil. We have to add compost and manure to it.

We bought 1/2" wire mesh for the lining. You can just lay the wire down, but we have sneaky critters out here, so we decided to build a "boat" with the wire and staple it to the box sides. We could only buy it in small rolls at our local store, so we used tie wire to "sew" the pieces together.

After I started, I realized that every other square was probably fine. Otherwise it would take all day!

The hubby started putting the dirt back in before I could get a really good picture, but you can kind of see the wire bent up on the sides and stapled to the wood. This should really help with our rodent problem.

I hope this gave you some ideas for working with your raised garden bed, but most importantly, do it ahead of time and you will save yourself some back-breaking shoveling later!

- - Happy Gardening! - -