If you’re thrifty and can find some used materials, you can make a very cozy raised bed mini-greenhouse to extend your garden season at almost no cost!

Check out this simple and affordable idea for building a small greenhouse to keep your garden growing into the fall and winter months! In this version, used railroad ties make up the base, and a heavy-duty plastic cover keeps your plants nice and warm.

You can buy greenhouses like this online, but they usually cost at least several hundred dollars. You can make your own version at a fraction of the cost by salvaging used materials and putting it together yourself!

It’s actually pretty simple, as this gardener recounts below.

…I had railroad ties lying around, and I used the ties to build a three-tier, 4-by-8-foot raised garden bed. I drove rebar into the ties…to tie them together. I lined the garden bed with heavy plastic to limit potential contamination to the soil from the railroad ties, and I poked holes in the plastic for proper drainage….

I also made a mini-greenhouse cover for the bed so the crops could get an earlier start. Some of the cover materials I had on hand and some I bought. The cost for the greenhouse cover was $95….

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Photo Credit: Robert Ford