I Upgraded My Concrete Garden Beds (Now with Curves!)

Comments · 176

• MA

  @matthewtrujillo3712 · 10 months ago · pinned

  I have the square molds and have poured probably 50 of them for my garden. Love this update.

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• FI

  @fivefivesix3625 · 1 year ago

  A few thoughts... Im a concrete guy,. For small batches, a mixing paddle a drill, and a five gallon bucket work fine (Mixed 10 bags that way today in about 20 minutes) .. Instead of a round dowel, use square tubbing.. This way it will lock at 90 or straight.. Also the molds could include a way to introduce compressed air that would quickly release the molds.. There is also "high early" concrete that has plenty of working time for this application, and will not take days to cure. To be honest, 6k or 5k psi concrete is way over kill for this application, the loads on a garden bed could probably be supported by drywall mud (if it was water proof)...  And no need for a grinder a simple rubbing stone, even an old brick will nock the curse of those corners with less dust, time and effort... This is not to criticize by any way shape or form, this is just a guy thats been been in the concrete world for many years offering some advice... Final thought, if you want a food grade release agent, just spray everything with Pam, or rub it with any food grade oil...

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• KE

  @kettch42 · 1 year ago

  Instead of a heat gun, use an air compressor blower attachment to blast air into the seam between the concrete and the mold. That is a pretty reliable way to release it.

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• TI

  @timallen9818 · 6 days ago

  If you drill 2 bolt holes through the flat top flange of the mold just outside of where the pipe goes through, you could bolt on a small piece of plywood with a concave cove molding insert sticking down into the end of the mold.  This would make the ends a full 180 degree radius, instead of just a 90 degree radius on the outside. The resulting panels could be set up at any angle to make the beds curved, hexagonal, octagonal, or whatever you want.

• LU

  @Lumens1 · 1 year ago

  The best series on YouTube! Glad to see another episode. Those rounded corners look sharp!

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• EL

  @ElementofKindness · 1 year ago

  The added expense of mixing concrete with 100% acrylic fortifier yields best results. No shrinking, no hairline cracks, and extremely weatherproof.

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• ME

  @merccat67 · 1 year ago

  This is what YouTube should be all about.  Love these molds and looking forward to picking up a set once I can afford it.

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• DE

  @Dev-lc4cd · 11 months ago (edited)

  The comprehensive degree of testing you&apos;ve demonstrated using lightweight concrete to make these panels made this series of videos my favorite to watch. <br><br>Once I recover from my condition, one of the first things I plan to do is to start a volunteer program to restore the appearance of several neglected city blocks housing seniors and disabled people, by making and installing these garden box panels to restore the empty tree boxes around these blocks, that are currently just square pits collecting random garbage that would have otherwise found their way to the street where the weekly street sweeper would&apos;ve carried it away. <br><br>I believe restoring these tree boxes with these economical and aesthetically pleasing garden box panels would help promote more interest from the city in investing at least minimal resources into maintaining these public areas, as well as providing opportunities for the residents to engage with nature amongst this unnatural concrete sprawl, by taking an interest in maintaining the plants grown in these boxes.<br><br>I&apos;ll keep you updated on the project once it&apos;s underway, as it&apos;s your work with this concept that&apos;ll have played a crucial role in making this possible. <br><br>That being said, I have several suggestions I would like to make in hopes that you&apos;ll include them in your future episodes of this series. Most important is incorporating the technique of making these panels as composites, by first applying a facecoat to the forms, a thin coating of a cement mix optimized for durability, and then back-filling the rest of the form with the aircrete cement mix on top of that, finished with another face coat for the durability of the back of the panel as well. This way, you&apos;d have both the lightweight advantage and the surface durability. It should pass the weed wacker test perfectly.<br><br>To spray on a facecoat, hopper sprayers are easy to use and can be bought for $30, used along with an air compressor. Or these facecoats can be troweled onto the form. <br><br>But there&apos;s another advantage to this that can&apos;t be understated. If you go over to the Youtube channel &quot;Tech Ingredients&quot;, the episode called &quot;Easy Tricks Using Fiberglass Strengthening!&quot;, the host explains how, when under a load, a slab of whatever material experiances all of the tension and compression forces at its surface, and procedes to demonstrate this with a panel made from foam laminated on both sides with a fiberglass/resin coating, and the results are impressive. <br><br>Many things are made with such composites, such as boats. This is why I believe you should see a significant difference in performance when making these cement panels as composites as I&apos;ve described. And the indentation you&apos;ve designed in the middle of these panels increases the total surface area of the face, which should further increase the effectiveness of this composite technique.<br><br>Also, accordingly, a metal grating would be best placed as close to the front and back surfaces as possible, if you wanted to maximize the effectiveness of this reinforcement. Instead of that fence wire, you would use stucco lath. I&apos;m sure you can see the relevance here. Its comes in metal and fiberglass versions. If metal, the lath can first be pressed into the form to take on its shape, and then removed and reapplied over the facecoat. <br><br>Another great YouTube channel I&apos;d recommend that makes several great, in-depth explanations and detailed recipes about making ultra-high performance concrete is called &quot;TrinicLLC&quot;. Particularly, the videos titled &quot;Trinic GFRC Class Lecture - Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete&quot; and &quot;GFRC (Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete) SCC CSA Concrete&quot;, among other really informative videos. They&apos;re made by a company that makes concrete forms, to explain to people how they could make a business doing the same, but the way the information is presented also makes it very accessible to a DIYer. Lots of very useful and accessible info. <br><br>This is how I learned about this technique of applying a facecoat followed by a backcoat. Also, they&apos;ve done extensive testing to figure out the maximum amount of glass fiber that can be added to a mix before additional fiber actually reduces performance. 3% of the total dry weight is optimal. And they also explain how to best use superplastisizers and other admixes to make the concrete &quot;self-consolidating&apos;, so the result for these facecoats are perfect, no bubbles at all, no need to vibrate, and reaching 10k-12k psi strength. <br><br>This is all in line with the DIY nature of making these panels, which is why I think it&apos;s relevant enough to consider.

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• JA

  @jackdotzman2908 · 1 year ago

  This raised garden concrete casting is awesome. &nbsp;You’ve done a heck of a job developing your concrete product. &nbsp;The molds are beautiful. &nbsp;Not to mention the quality of your video. &nbsp;From Missouri, thank you for your product and your very high quality video.

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• DE

  @derekdean9256 · 1 year ago

  I never thought of these. I loved that u include the older panels to make me think about my older beds. &quot;Maybe make a smaller Transition panels for looks.&quot;

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• TO

  @toomaskotkas4467 · 1 year ago

  This is one of the best instructional video I have encountered on YouTube! Bravo and thank you for your detailed explanations.

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• JU

  @juliahelland6488 · 4 months ago

  Thanks for sharing! Great tutorial! 💯