The Garden Boxes

Well, y'all have been tremendously patient about all the Forever Home renovation pictures. Tonight, I'm too tired to face the deck/eaves/rotted wood/paint sample horror that is the current project, so I thought I'd finally post about the garden boxes. Yes, I know, we built them back in March. If it's any consolation, they still pretty much look like just the same as in the last photo of this entry. Zorak and I are writing this together, so to differentiate our voices, we'll bold his technical notes and zippy commentary.

First, these are built almost exclusively from salvaged wood on the property. The plywood, the pressure treated posts -- all stuff laying around from the renovation or from the previous owners. That did wonders not only for the landscape, but for our pocketbook, as well.

The boxes are a combination of rectangles, squares, and angled pieces. We did this because we have grand plans to build up a maze garden with sitting spots, inviting play areas, and a gazebo, all incorporating these shapes. Hillbilly Zen, if you will. We are of a philosophy which observes strict conservation of energy (ie. kinda lazy), and so they're fairly modular, easy to build, and ought to last a long, long time.

The sides are all constructed thusly:

(Technical specs: 3/8ths plywood sides, 9-1/4" high - which we did just so we could get five strips per sheet; pressure treated 2x4 bottom; regular 2x4 top board. The rabbet joints were cut with a circular saw with a strip of wood clamped to the base of the guide to set the 3/4" depth and 1/2" width of the joint. The half-inch width allows the 2x4 top [and bottom] to overhang the sides by about an eighth of an inch, and leaves a 2-1/2" wide hollow core.)

*psst* You can see it in action *here*.)

Assemble with child labor, using galvanized nails...

The sides attach to the corners with a nifty little insert, jointy thing. (Zorak will fill us in on the details in the next technical note.) The boards are cut to fit just inside the cross section of the side pieces, and then you can secure them. Again, with the children. (Conservation of energy rule #326 - your children have far more energy than you do. Use it well.)

This one is for an angled piece -->

And this one is for a straight 90' corner. Handy for all those squares and rectangles, no?

(The posts extend beyond the height of the sides so that they can be set into the ground. They do that on the top for purely aesthetic purposes. The bevels, for example, help hide some of the hazards of using salvaged material. The cleats, what Dy refers to as "boards," are 2x3's, which allows them to fit inside the 2-1/2" hollow-core sides.)

Once the individual bits and pieces are assembled (and inspected by the dog and the baby), you're ready to let the kids finish building the box. (Again with the child labor!) Simply slip the pieces into place and nail or screw the sides to the cleats (see, I got it right this time!)

Then it's time for the really fun part! We used deck stain, namely because we had some on hand, and wanted to see how it would look. But also because we would rather not be replacing these things before we're done with the rest of the renovations. Conserve, conserve, conserve.

By this time, the boxes are too big for the kids to drag out to the garden, so you'll probably have to do that part yourself. OR, you could load the box on a red wagon and have the children haul it to the top of the hill. Not that we actually did that... we're just sayin'.

(Once the deck stain dried, the boxes were lined with polyethylene landscaping liner to keep the interior of the boxes from rotting.) Obviously, if you're going totally organic, you'd skip this part. And the one just before it. Well, and the pressure-treated... come to think of it, if you're going totally organic, this is going to be no help at all.

Now it's just a matter of placing your boxes, making sure they're level,


And filling them in with nutrient-rich goodness! (A little sand, kitchen compost and manure from the barn, in our case, to supplement the heavy clay soil we have. Yum! Yum!) The sticks are just for decorative purposes. Plus, they give the children something to do when the children decide to try the "I'm bored" line on us. So far, the sticks are still there. Smart kids.


And there ya have it - Forever Home Garden Boxes. Yet another family project we've started but not finished, erm, survived.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy