I have been doing some thinking about rock raised beds. I will not be using rocks per say but thinking about using Air Crete blocks to build mine with. The heat retention on the cooler nights would be great.
I have been doing some thinking about rock raised beds. I will not be using rocks per say but thinking about using Air Crete blocks to build mine with. The heat retention on the cooler nights would be great.
Cool. The only reason I would use rock is because it's free and readily available. I hadn't even thought about the heat retention before, but @ewasteguy1 mentioned it and then I was sold. We are just off the Alaska highway, so every little bit helps.
Check the content of your air crete blocks before using them, make sure no chemicals are used in the process of making them that could leech back into your soil and roots.
Yeah, that's a good point. I don't even know what air crete is. I guess I'll go look that up.
Im not sure what it is myself either, ill have to look it up aswell, But myself i always stick to natural building materials when possible... Rocks, dead fall trees for logs, Use a chainsaw home mill attachment to make squared off rough lumber aswell to build raised wooden beds for seniors that cant get down to garden anymore, once the snows melted off i plan to do a nice tutorial on making the raised wooden ones, But in your case, Rocks are great, The darker the better, But sandstone rocks, like the crumbly ones,, or pourous rocks i find dont make the best for the sides as they lose their heat quicker then a nice dense rock. flat rocks are perfect they stack nicely. Or if flat ones arent easily findable, large but irregular shaped rocks versus round work well too, play jigsaw puzzle and stack them a couple rows deep and just layer them piecing them into each other how they fit best. as for space fill. I simply find some really clay rich soil which is nice about saskatchewan clay is everywhere. any how i get a nice pile of clay wet and mix small gravel into it until it get stiff and clumpy and pack that between the rocks to fill the cracks and gaps. and once your done, walk around it with a tiger torch and get it nice and warm. makes almost like cement. seals well and once it drys its like cement, some of the walls ive done are working on being 10 years old and still arent crumbling.
Oh, that's awesome. We have a pretty crappy clay here, but I will ask my buddies that work building roads in the bush. They might come across a site that has some good stuff. Most of the rocks are round, but I was going to use mortar and sand to build it up a few feet. There is a spot that has a lot of shot rock from a mountain, and we plan on going camping near there this summer, so we'll take the trailer in and pull any good squared off pieces out with the quad. It's almost like granite, so it should be pretty good if we can get to it without the quarry guys catching us. It's in a blast site that they are getting riprap for the dam face, but the blasting is all done now.
The driftwood trees that float in will be really good for the beds, I'm thinking.
I looked up air crete and it looks pretty amazing. I'm going to research more, but it looks like it's just really wet cement mixed with dish soap foam. I don't know what the chemical composition is, but whatever is in Dawn dish soap and the cement you use.