What are your recommendations for the raised bed? (height, soil etc - we’re not interested in the Grow Bed on the website, ours is part of a larger space).
The walls of the raised bed should be a minimum of 33 cm high (1 foot plus 1 inch). There is no upper limit to the height, this depends on your preferred working height and if you need a taller bed to limit access by animals.
A good smaller size that will also provide some food growing space is 90 cm/3 feet wide by 1.5 meters/5 feet long. This will be filled by ¾ of a cubic metre/ 1 cubic yard of soil.
Shown below are a range of garden bed size options if you are building your own garden beds, or adding Subpods to existing garden beds:
You’ll be digging a hole which is: 85cm L x 55cm W x 31cm D (33in. L x 31in. W x 22in. D)
That’s around 8-10cm (3in.) longer and wider than Subpod. It’s important that the top
airflow vents are above ground.
There are different options, depending if you are only installing 1 Subpod or many Subpods.
The image below is 5 Subpods in a long garden bed with soil/garden surrounding each Subpod.
The image below is 5 Subpods joined together in a long garden bed with the surrounding soil around the outside of the Subpods.
If you are growing vegetables in your raised garden bed, it is worth using a premium grade of soil, not potting mix. Potting mix is designed to hold a lot of water, but for a raised garden bed, it is better to have a well draining soil.
For example, a good soil that we like to use when making our garden beds will have ⅓ rough sand, ⅓ clay, ⅓ peat/sustainably sourced shredded coconut husk. Depending on the size of your raised garden bed, it may be more economical to source this directly from a landscape supply store rather than buying bags of soil from a supplier like Home Depot or Bunnings.
For the Subpod Grow Bed on our website which is 90cm/ 3 feet long x 120 cm wide x 45 high; after subtracting the volume occupied by the Subpod in the garden bed, you will need approximately 0.35 cubic meters of soil/340 litres of soil, e.g. 7 x 50 litre soil bags or 14 x 25 litre soil bags.
For a larger bed, say 90cm/ 3 feet wide by 1.5 m/ 5 feet long, by 35 cm/ 1 foot high; after subtracting the Subpod volume, this requires ¾ cubic meter or 1 cubic yard of soil, which is 750 - 1,000 litres of soil, e.g. 15 x 50 litre bags of soil or 30 x 25 litre bags of soil.
I would add a maximum of 20% compost to the total.
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