If you want to grow some herbs or vegetables, but don’t have a lot of room for a traditional garden, or maybe you know someone who is handicapped in some way, that getting to a garden would be tough, consider using a grow box and plant a garden on your deck or patio.
This great idea from Old World Garden Farms, with plans to build their grow boxes, that allow for growing plant in a pot inside the box, which looks great and has a built in trellis for staking things like tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, etc. so they grow up off the ground for a great harvest.
The grow boxes virtually eliminate weeding. and make chores such as planting, watering, harvesting and fall clean-up a breeze. Combine multiple grow boxes with a few small raised beds for crops such as lettuce and beans – and you have a full-fledged low-maintenance vegetable garden!
Even better – by scouring up a few 5 gallon buckets, making home-made compost, your own soil mix, and using pallet wood to build your boxes – you can virtually make an entire garden for free.
Building The Grow Boxes
You can use any wood material to build your box. These are pieces of rough sawn barn lumber cut and ready to assemble.
Since the soil and plants never come in contact with the wood – you can use reclaimed lumber or pallets to build your boxes – meaning they can be made for little to no cost. You can also use traditional 2 x 6 framing or treated lumber as a low-cost alternative. All work and look great – and can be painted or stained to dress up the finished box.
No matter what size – the building process is the same. You need to simply make sure that the completed box is large enough to fit over the container you will be using – and that there is enough room left to install either the metal or wooden trellis.
Let’s use a 5 gallon bucket as an example.
Attaching trim pieces
Most 5 gallon buckets measure 12″ wide and about 14″ to 14.5″ high. So by creating a grow box with a minimum 14″x 14″ inside measurement and a height of 15″ – you leave plenty of space for the bucket and the trellis inside, and enough height to cover the bucket.
2″ x 6″ framing or 1″ x 6″ decking lumber actually work great for the 5 gallon bucket grow boxes – creating a perfect 15″ x 15″ inside diameter when put together and overlapped on the ends. (see picture). To hold the boxes together – we attach a simple trim piece to the bottom and top of the grow box.
To read the rest of the article visit Old World Garden Farms, whom we thank for this great DIY idea.
