Make this raised bed for a song in Santa Rosa

On my homestead, I try to reuse as much materials as possible. Newspapers are folded into seed starting pots, spent canning jar lids are turned into plant tags, cardboard boxes and old cotton sheets are used for sheet mulching. Recently, I’ve been repurposing chunks of concrete, creating a dry-stacked planting bed.

This concrete came from a project from last year in which we broke apart our patio. It was seven decades old, uneven and falling apart; cracked by roots of a bay tree and expanding and shrinking clay soil. Bermuda grass infected any open cracks, lending a patchwork appearance to the whole thing.

Besides being ugly, concrete is impermeable, and the only impermeable surface I want on my homestead is my roof. So we had a friend of a friend break it into manageable chunks, and I pried them up and piled the approximate 1,000 square feet of stuff in the corner of the yard. It now had a new, more glamorous name: urbanite, and it was ready for re-use.

Creating this planting bed has been a high priority, as it was where I had planned for kiwis to be planted. Fuzzy kiwis supposedly take about a billion years before they start producing fruit (OK, 5-9, basically a billion), so I wanted to get them as soon as possible. We built an arbor for the female kiwi when we redid the chicken tunnel and pasture last year, and a fence trellis for the male kiwi, and now just needed to build the bed.

Because I have solid adobe clay soil and I’m prone to flooding, almost everything has to be planted above grade to ensure good drainage. My raised vegetable beds are made from wood, but now I’m turning to urbanite for the others. To prep the bed area, I weeded out Bermuda grass by hand, then laid down a thick layer of cardboard for further weed suppression. Under the area where the concrete was going, I used strips of cotton sheets to act as further weed barrier and prevent the concrete from cutting up the cardboard (and giving the Bermuda an easy way in).

Then, I pieced together the chunks of concrete, like a puzzle of giant, heavy pieces. The occasional rock that I’ve hauled home from various adventures also got included, adding some variety to the concrete and giving me a place to display my rock collection. Nothing was mortared together, simply stacked in a staggered pattern, finding pieces that sat flat or locked together to create a stable wall. I created a perimeter wall about 1 foot high, then filled with purchased well-draining soil.

The kiwis were planted, as well as a potted pomegranate tree that was an impulse purchase a few years ago. The rest of the space was filled with drifts of echinacea, rudbeckia and coreopsis starts, seeded sunflowers and cosmos, and strawberries and prostrate rosemary to cascade down the edge.

For my bees and other beneficial insects, I tucked a saucer filled with water and stones on a plant stand amongst the plants. No kiwi flowers yet, unsurprisingly, but things are growing nicely, and we do have a bird’s nest with four eggs built into one of the vines.

Why did we choose to use urbanite instead of imported stone?

Some brown Sonoma field stone sure would have been pretty, but reusing materials, particularly ones on site, is an important aspect of ecological gardening. No new materials needed to be mined or transported, thus reducing the environmental impact of my garden. I also chose to use the urbanite because the cracks between the stones will create habitat for lizards and other invertebrates.

It’s a multi-use function to create a usable space and a wildlife habitat. Plus, it was free!

Melissa Keyser is a Santa Rosa-based freelance writer and gardener. Read her blog, “Forgotten Skills, a Sonoma County urban homesteading adventure,” at forgottenskills.wordpress.com.