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Gardening is a hobby that is good for both body and mind, especially in isolation years. Planting plants is a process of meditation and contemplation (at least for me), and it provides some beautiful things to focus on when the world is difficult to deal with. Domestic produce is almost always better than store-bought because it is picked when it is fully mature. There is also more confidence in knowing what has entered the soil that produces all of this.

But before you harvest, you must first sow. Although most gardening work is passive—just watering, waiting and observing—the hard work is pre-existing: carrying bags of soil, compost and fertilizer; plowing the land; of course, you can also provide your plants Build a seedbed.

Last year, my partner and I moved into a new house-we became homeowners for the first time. We are tired, our bank accounts are almost empty, and there are not many tools in the garage. But we knew we wanted to invest in a garden, and we knew we wanted a raised bed.

As a Wirecutter writer, I want to tell you that before building my garden bed, I was obsessed with researching this topic. I do not have. Instead, my partner stumbled upon Oldcastle's planting wall blocks at our local home improvement super center.

"Hey," she texted me with a photo next to it. "These seem to be useful?"

When she started browsing Pomodoro, I searched YouTube. I quickly discovered that people really like these bricks. In one video after another, gardeners of all experience levels praised the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of these concrete blocks, and shared tips on how to make the most of them. I was convinced. I rushed outside, measured our space, and then texted her the size. A few hours later (yes, on the same day), the bed was made.

It turns out that I am not the only Wirecutter employee fascinated by these modern engineering marvels: two of my colleagues built their own brick beds at the same time. In the end, all three of us were very impressed that our garden was cheap and easy to assemble.

If you live in an area with fertile soil, underground gardening is simple and cheap. You can modify the naturally occurring dirt and directly plant it.

However, if you are dealing with high groundwater levels, poor soil pH, or rock-hard bottoms (like me), raised bed gardening is a good choice. Building an elevated bed allows you to create the soil mixture you want from scratch. And you don’t need to deal with rocks, tree roots and other obstacles to allow your plants to grow on fertile ground. In central Oregon, raised beds are our best choice, because our rocky volcanic soil is almost impossible to grow anything directly underground without serious work.

The raised bed also makes it easier for you to garden, helps prevent some pests from staying away from your bounty, and allows you to start planting earlier than using the ground bed during the planting season.

But why use these Oldcastle blocks instead of other raised bed solutions? Oh, I'm glad you asked!

First and foremost, they are wallet-friendly and are available in most large hardware stores, which is impossible to say for many raised boxed bed sets.

"I have done a lot of research on building garden beds, and by research I mean that I consider buying a garden kit because it is not convenient for me," said Alejandra Matos, Wirecutter's senior audience development manager. "My local hardware store has sold out the most basic gardening kits, even those are much more expensive than the bricks and wood from Oldcastle."

A quick glance at the Lowe's and Home Depot lists can confirm that many elevated garden kits cost as much as $100, even for small wooden beds or galvanized steel beds. Some costs are several times that of it. At the same time, the price of these bricks is about US$3 each, and a basic bed only requires four of them. Add four suitable lumbers and you get a rock-solid loft bed for a price well below $50.

Can you make a cheaper bed without these bricks by nailing or screwing these wooden boards together? Yes, you can (video). But the block-based approach has other advantages.

In addition to cost, the biggest advantage of using these blocks is the ease of construction. The beds you make with them are still DIY, but they are the gardening equivalent of IKEA flat furniture.

You don’t need power tools, you don’t need to figure out the safest way to screw the whole thing together, and you don’t have to worry about failing to connect at the corners. There is very little actual labor involved in building your bed (although dragging dirt, wood, and blocks from your car is an exercise). The bricks do all the alignment work for you, and the soil holds the board in place. The whole thing came together at an astonishing speed.

"So fast!" said Jessica Bell, a Wirecutter software engineer, who used Oldcastle bricks and her mother to build a two-bed garden. "We finished all this in one afternoon, and it looked much better than we thought. My mother really likes it, it's fun to build."

The tools you need most are tape measure, shovel, rake, hammer or rubber mallet, and level (if you want to make sure everything is square). However, as long as you don't mind minor flaws, you can easily build and fill the bed with a shovel: just slide the wood into the groove in the block and add soil.

"My biggest advice is not to think too much," Alejandra said. "My garden is in a sloping area in the yard. I should probably razed it to the ground, but basil, assorted peppers and tomatoes still thrive."

Using Oldcastle blocks, your garden bed becomes extremely modular, because each block has a slot on each side that can clamp the end of a 2×6 board. You can play Tetris in the garden, add extra boxes to the side of the existing bed or create different shapes to make it easier to touch different plants. You can also connect beds of different depths to each other to create a terraced appearance.

Jessica told me that because her mother Janet was “really short,” they calculated her wingspan to determine the width of her garden bed. "We decided to adopt the U shape because it allows her to reach all parts of the garden," Jessica said. "It's also a more interesting shape, and she kind of likes that."

First, make sure you have a sunny place in your yard with space for a high bed. Consider how big your bed needs to be to support the number of plants you want to grow. Remember that each vegetable plant requires a few inches to a few feet of garden space to grow properly.

Also remember that you need to be able to reach the center of the bed to trim plants and pick your products. And you need to leave at least a few feet in the perimeter so that you can easily enter all corners of the garden.

Ideally, the location of your bed should be level to promote even watering and proper drainage. If it is not naturally flat, you can level it with a shovel and rake before building the bed.

After taking the materials home, assembly is easy (video). Simply place your blocks at pre-measured intervals to create the shape of the bed. Then insert the wood, add your landscape fabric or barbed wire (if needed), use a rubber mallet (or your feet) to tighten things, and fill the box. Yes, it is that simple.

Here are some additional tips that may help improve the stability and longevity of elevated garden beds:

Jessica's final tip for the budding gardener? "Grow more tomatoes than you think you need. Uuuuuuuuuu!"

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