Building And Installing Our Garden Boxes
by Luminiferous
After reading the All New Square Foot Gardening
We got some three inch deck screws, a bunch of two by tens cut to appropriate lengths for our four foot by six foot boxes, our drill and screwdriver and hauled it all into the basement for some drilling and screwing. We pre-drilled two holes in the ends of each six foot piece of lumber, laid out the lumber on the floor as it would look in its finished form, and then screwed our deck screws. We used deck screws instead of just regular screws because they’ll be more weather resistant.
After completing our boxes, we took them into the yard and dropped them in a good spot. However, our yard isn’t exactly flat, and the boxes wouldn’t lie horizontally no matter where we put them. I decided that an unlevel garden box would be a problem when it rained, since all the good soil we put into the boxes would just run out of the tilting wooden frames. So, I fixed the problem by leveling them out. I dug a good trench in a few of the corners such that the box could sit level horizontally.
Look at that photo. Check out those rocks we had to dig out. Along with the big rocks, there were bits of glass and chuncks of plastic buried about a foot deep. It looks like our yard is built on clean fill, which isn’t surprising given that in our hilly neighborhood practically everybody’s yard has been leveled out industrially.
After digging the trenches, I used the removed sod to bolster the opposite corners of the boxes. And now we have three big empty garden boxes waiting for our topsoil and compost.
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Posted by Luminiferous on April 22nd, 2008 filed in Garden Planning, Gardening
5 Responses to “Building And Installing Our Garden Boxes”
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April 24th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I certainly hope that was treated lumber. Even treated lumber will only last so many years. My 12 year old raised beds are starting to go and I don’t want to even think about fixing those.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:04 am
While they weren’t treated lumber, we chose to go with untreated lumber on purpose. One thing still to be done with these beds is to encase the outer perimeter of the beds with bricks, which will eventually be the beds themselves as the wood decays.
Even though cyanide/arsenic aren’t an issue with treated lumber the way folk think it is, there is still chemical leeching which does cause concern, especially when gardening organically.
April 27th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Good idea. I shied away from using treated lumber, too, and ended up building mine from composite decking material, after doing a little reassuring research. I really like the idea of building something even more permanent with bricks, though. Sheesh, I would love to have a stone wall around mine. Glad to find another new SFGardener!
April 27th, 2008 at 11:06 am
We were actually considering using bricks, but wood is just a lot quicker and easier to build with. And wood was definately preferable to get a strong frame into the sloped ground.
Some time later on we’ll probably build up bricks around the existing wood anyway.
April 27th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
@Kate
Yeah, we originally thought about building the boxes straight from brick, no wood at all. Time and effort involved in that was going to set us back too much to do that, so we went ahead with the wooden frames to start with. That gives us time to figure out more with the bricks before we do them too.