Why do you need a garden bed cover for your raised bed?

One day I decided to design and build a protective cover for my raised garden beds that will serve as a cage, in the effort to protect my vegetables from small animals.

And I’ms so glad with this DIY garden bed cover! My vegetables are thriving, no more loss of leaves or seedlings!

Now I can grow whatever vegetables and fruits I like without worrying if squirrels like them as well. This DIY garden bed cover will work for other animals as well, such as raccoons, deer, and others.

DIY raised garden bed cover finished dimensions

For my garden beds, I have two standard 3′ by 6′ raised beds, similar to this one. The finished DIY garden bed cover is about 6 feet wide, 4 feet tall, and slightly less than 3 feet deep.

Why less than 3 feet deep? There are two reasons:

1. I have 1/2″ irrigation tubing sitting on top of the back edge of the raised bed.
2. the fence between our yard and our neighbor’s is quite old so the top portion is slightly leaning to our side.

By reducing the depth I’m able to address those two factors.

In terms of deciding this garden bed cover and doors height, I need this protective cover to be fairly tall to account for large plants and vines, such as artichokes, peas, and cucumbers. I landed on 4 feet as the height.

And for construction, each garden cover has a pair of doors, attached to the cover frame with hinges. I also installed two barrel bolt on the top frame to make sure I can close them securely.

Also this DIY garden cover is completely covered by chicken wire for all sides except the bottom.

DIY garden bed cover video

If you are a visual learner, I made a 5-minute video on our process of building this DIY garden bed cover with doors and hinges:

DIY raised bed cover tools and materials

The material listed below are for one 3′ by 6′ raised bed cover:

Exterior grade 2 in. x 2 in. x 8 ft wood board

Chicken wire. I use 3′ wide chicken wire because it matches well with my 3′ by 6′ raised bed. I used 30′ per garden bed cover.

Miter saw to cut the wood

Wire cutter

2 1/2″ Exterior screws

Stapler. You can choose a electric stapler to save some elbow grease

Stainless steel staples (exterior grade)

Brass hinges x 4 (exterior grade)

Brass barrel bolt x 2 (exterior grade)

DIY raised garden bed cover instructions

Here’s the diagram I created in SketchUp. This shows how the pieces attach together.

Note that I leave 1″ out from the depth because I have irrigation tubing sitting on the back edge of the raised bed.

You might need to adjust the number based on your situation.

Each cover should be customized for your garden bed, I would encourage you to draw a diagram on paper or SketchUp, to determine the size you’d like to cut.

DIY RAISED BED COVER PROJECT CUT LIST

Frame: (4) * 73″; (4) * 32″; (4)*48″

2 doors: (4) * 31.5″; (4) * 47.25″

STEP 1. CUT 2IN X 2IN X 8FT BOARDS TO SIZE.

You’ll need to cut those 2×2 boards into two type of pieces, one for building the garden cover frame structure, the other for diagonal braces to support the structure. PROTECT YOUR GARDEN FROM ANIMALS

All the frame structure pieces are straight cut. All braces are 45 degree diagonal cut.

One trick to quickly produce the braces is to align the board to a point on your miter saw (you can use tape to mark it), and flip it back and forth between cutting. In my case, I used the line(right) on my miter saw to align the 2×2 boards.

If you have watched the video above, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This way you will be able to produce a lot of those pieces in a short amount of time, also they will be exactly the same size without pre-measuring.

Also, drilling pilot holes is important for this project as without them the wood will tend to split while you attach them.

If you have a pocket hole jig, use it as it will make your life a lot easier.

We didn’t own a pocket hole tool back then, so we used two screws per corner where three 2×2 boards meet. We drilled each hole around 1/3 of the way instead of the exact center, that will give the second screw some space to pass through.

1. the front side. You want to leave it open so you can add doors.

2. the bottom side. This is to maximize the planting area of you garden bed without blocking the soil. Also the bottom side of the garden cover is just sitting on top of the raised bed, not really holding any weight by itself.

We started by building the back side first, reinforced it with braces on four corners, then move to the front side. Note for the front side of the garden bed cover, that you’ll want to skip reinforcement to leave space for doors.

It’s recommended to dry fit your frame on top of your raised bed to make sure the cover fits well.

After assembly,  you should have the basic frame structure of the garden bed cover and a pair of doors. For each door, we have all four corner reinforced with the braces. Now you are ready to attach chicken wire, which is also called poultry netting.

To handle chicken wire, wear gloves to protect your hands. Note the main animals I’m trying to deter are squirrels and mouse, if your garden animal have stronger teeth, consider using garden fence such as this one.

Because my raised bed is 3′ deep, I’m able to lay 3′ wide chicken wire along three sides of the frame continuously without cutting it – from one side to top, then to the other side.

To attach chicken wire, we used stainless steel staples to make it weather resistant.

We used a manual stapler because it is cheaper, but you can use electric stapler as it will make your life a lot easier.

Most of the time the staples won’t go all the way in the wood (at least for our manual one), so we used a hammer to hammer them in more for security.