help with a garden project

AustinREDevelop

Here's some background. My mom and I like to garden. She has had two hip surgeries and bending has become somewhat uncomfortable for her.

I want to buy or build a small 4'x4' container garden for my mom. The square container would be 18" deep. Here's the kicker. I'd like for the container to be able to be raised and lowered fairly easily. This would allow for stability when we are not working on the soil, plants, or weeding, but would allow mom to work on the plants while standing up.

I've looked around and see nothing like this for sale. The closest that I came to something like this was a plastic wheeled 2'x2' raised platform. With the platform having wheels and being consistently raised I wonder about the stability of the garden when plants grow up and raise the center of gravity even further. Anyway, if anyone has any ideas or knows of an existing product that would be useful to me, I'd appreciate any ideas.

Joe

marc412

Hello, I just wanted to say if you find anything along these lines let me know, as my mother has hip problems as well... the best thing I was able to do was build her a raised garden. I took seven 6X6 and sank them into the ground about 2 feet and poured cement around them so they would not move then I placed a 1 inch sheet of plywood on top, I then secured 2X8 around the border to act like box type deal, we then drilled mutliple holes in the bottom with a 1.5 holes saw as she wanted to hang some tomatoes plants upside down and plant other things upright. one last thing make sure you use a mineral oil or something none poisonous on the wood to keep it from rotting... 3 years later and shes still using it... but as far as moving it up and down... take a bag of dirt and soak it down real well then try to lift that... good luck!!! no times that by a good 10+ bags of soil

AustinREDevelop

I hear ya. The weight and support were the main concerns I had with some sort of height changing device. I was thinking maybe someone had thought of this or was up to the design challenge.

Wiz1940

My son built one out of cement blocks .....4 blocks high, 3 blocks wide and 8 blocks long. Before he put the last row of blocks on, he put some heavy sheet metal cut to size, drilled drain holes in it and added the last row of blocks for the sides of the bed. He grows all kinds of vegetables in it, even large tomato plants and he does very well with them. Hope this is helpfull to you.