What better way to spend time at home during a self quarantine than making outdoor planter boxes! It’s a great way to keep busy and grow your own food (you know… in case sh*t really hits the fan). This project was super easy!
We chose to make our planter out of cedar. Cedar is extremely durable and it’s a natural insect repellent.
Materials:
1 x 8 Cedar Planks (we bought two 8 foot boards)
Wood Glue (I like to use Gorilla Glue)
Brad Nail Gun (optional – this is the one I have)
Brad Nails (optional)
Potting Soil
Plants (we used basil and lettuce)
Step-by-step Instructions:
First, cut your cedar planks. We purchased two 8 foot boards, so we decided to make our planter four feet long in order to use as much of the wood as possible. You could make yours shorter or longer based on the board size you purchase. We used 1 x 8 planks, so our dimensions were as follows:
Cut 2 boards to the exact same length. These will be your sides. Ours were 4 feet long.
Cut a third board to the length of your side boards minus the thickness of your boards (x2). This will be your bottom. We had 1×8 boards, which were actually about 3/4 inch thick. So, 4 feet (48 inches) minus 3/4 inch multiplied times 2 (1.5 inches) is 46.5 inches.
The last two cuts are for your end caps. They’ll be square cuts that are the length of your board width on each side. Our boards were 1x8s, which measured approximately 7.5 inches in width. So, our two end caps were 7.5 x 7.5 inches.
Ok, so maybe that wasn’t the easiest way to explain it, but I tried my best. Ideally, the sides and end caps will all flip up and fit nicely together.
Like this:
Next, use the wood glue to glue all the seams where wood meets wood.
Then use clamps to clamp everything tight to dry for a few hours.
We propped it up and used a clamp on each end.
After the wood glue dries, use the brad nail gun to drive some nails into the edges to secure everything. If you don’t have a brad nail gun, you can always use a hammer and nails, or wood screws. The brad nails are just super easy.
We actually stained our planter box. There’s a lot of different options for staining, but it will depend on where the box is located, what you’re growing, etc. I’d recommend an exterior stain that’s safe for growing food. However, cedar also looks great on its own. We didn’t have any at the time of the project, so I ended up using whatever we had. Our planter is under cover, so I wasn’t too concerned about the protection, and I only stained the outside, so I wasn’t worried about the chemicals either. I used rags made from old t-shirts to do the staining.
We let the stained wood sit out for a while to dry. The Easter bunny did a neighborhood walk through while we were working on our project.
Once the wood stain was dry, we planted our lettuce and basil in the potting soil and set up our new planter box on the front porch.
It was perfect! I see some yummy salads and pesto in our future!
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