While I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my farmbot genesis (Come on Farmbot team!) I have been reading the documentation, forum and doing general research to get ideas & prepare for setup.
I was planning on prepping the site and building the bed/frame this weekend.
I have seen the images of the MAX kit on the FB site where they use concrete footers instead of a wooden box and am wondering if that may be a better option
Now it looks like those might be custom poured with the 2x4 in the middle, but these from my local Home Depot have slots to hold 2" boards
So using 4 of those blocks and 2 2x6’s I could have wood supports pretty quick and cheaper than buying material for a raised bed.
I would get the frame made and then fill in between with dirt just like the image above.
I started this thread to get some opinions on the PROs VS CONs of doing this… Let me start with what I was thinking, please expand or tell me what I am missing. THANKS!!!
PROs
- Cheaper - 4 blocks and 2 boards will be less than $50
- Faster - less pieces to assemble, cut, etc
- Easier to till - I can drive my tiller right in to the bed once or twice a year or as needed
- Easier to level? - It seems to me this would be a simpler system to adjust as each block can be adjusted indvidually rather than a boxed made of imperfect boards screwed together that will warp over time (thoughts?)
- Less warpage? - if you have 1 2x6 in the slot of the block theoretically it will shrink or grow in the slot but stay straight. Unlike a raised bed box, where the sides are all warping differently and attached creating unpredictable warping
CONs
- aesthetics - wont look quite as nice as a finished wood box
- Weed Control - I will have to manually pull anything outside the reach of the robot and when trimming/edging around the yard there is not a hard edge I can cut against giving a clean line with the edger (the wall of the box would be ideal here)