assembled 26-inch tall Vego metal raised garden beds set up outdoors in spring.

Vego Raised Bed Assembly Hacks & Seedling Upgrades

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The week of April 15, 2026, brought perfect alignment with the stars: the weather stayed dry, and we finally carved out time away from the main garden to assemble our new Vego 26-inch tall, 4’x8′ raised beds.

While not fundamentally difficult, assembling five beds is a tedious job. With roughly 64 screws, nuts, and washers per bed, that adds up to a mountain of hardware—and an equal amount of bending over. The challenge was also a bit more intense than usual thanks to recent surgery on my left meniscus.

Picture of my Ocicat "Ryan Reynolds" helping me assemble a vego raised bed
My Ocicat, Ryan Reynolds helping me assemble a Vego 26″ raised bed

Working Smarter on Assembly

The first bed went together the hard way, meaning I relied on the tools supplied in the Vego box. For the remaining four, I decided to use my brain:

  • Power Tools: I swapped the manual tools for my trusty 3/8-inch drive Milwaukee cordless ratchet paired with a proper box wrench, which made short work of the fasteners.
  • The Cardboard Trick: Placing a section of the Vego corrugated box underneath the working area kept the lowest fasteners from dropping down into the grass, which had made that bottom row quite annoying to align.

Note: I left all fasteners slightly loose so we can easily level the beds once they are in their final positions.

The assembly took a few hours total—and would certainly go much faster for anyone without a bum leg. Where those beds are ultimately ending up will be covered in the next post.

Healthy green seedlings growing in clear square 4-inch nursery pots showing visible root structure.
Clear 4-inch square nursery pots make it easy to inspect root health before potting up.

Seedling Check-In & Nursery Pot Upgrades

Meanwhile, the seedlings are doing great. I ended up ordering two different styles of 4-inch nursery pots from Amazon to test out:

  1. Aobiono Clear Square Pots: Ordered in two 10-packs.
  2. RooTrimmer Clear Square Pots: Ordered in a 60-piece pack.

The RooTrimmers feature a clear, rigid construction on the top two-thirds and a flexible green material on the bottom third, mimicking the design of the Burpee 16 XL SuperSeed trays. I really like them. On the other hand, the Aobiono pots are 100% clear and rigid. Both styles share one major advantage: the clear construction lets me monitor root health directly, which is a fantastic feature.

Next weekend, all 140 seedlings are moving up into these 4-inch nursery pots. Looking ahead, I am definitely skipping the Burpee starter trays next year and going straight to sowing directly in the 4-inch pots from day one.

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