The first step to building our afFORDable Ford family garden was to build grow boxes. We went to Lowe's last week to purchase lumber to make our grow boxes. While we were there, the store associate in the lumber department suggested we venture down to the gardening section to purchase kits for grow boxes. He said they were about $60 and it would be about the same cost as the wood and hardware to build a grow box. WRONG I can't believe how wrong he was. He could have just been lazy and was not wanting to cut the wood planks down for me, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt. While I was checking into lumber, Brian was waiting for paint to be mixed for Carlee's room. I'm sure he saw me and heard what I was planning on doing and decided to save me some trouble. Turns out, the boxes were not very hard to make from scratch. Brian and I tackled 4 boxes in about 40 minutes. We probably could have gotten them done faster, but we were looking for a bit for the drill that matched the wood screws we got. Turns out, the boxes of screws came with a drill bit in them. We didn't discover that until after we found one in our tools.
We purchased 2" x 8" wood planks enough to make four 4 foot sections and twelve 3 foot sections. The wood planks were between $5 and $6 each. We needed 6 planks altogether to cut all the sections we needed. The wood was less than $30. We got two boxes of wood screws for a few dollars each. That was really all we needed to make our boxes. Less than $40 for all 4 boxes. I'm not sure how that is about the same as the $240 we would have spent to buy the prefabricated boxes. Some things are just a mystery to me.
A few things to note:
Make sure you buy outdoor wood screws. If they are not made for outdoor use, they could rust and ruin all your work.
Make sure the planks of wood aren't cracked. We went through several in the stack that just didn't look very good.
You can use 2x4's if you would like, but then you would also need some 2x2's to hold everything together and you would also need more screws.
Home Depot and Lowe's will both cut down the wood planks into smaller sections for you. They advertise that they charge after a certain amount of cuts, but they didn't charge us. The cuts won't be perfect, but they are good enough for the purposes of making grow boxes.
So, to actually make the boxes, we just put two sections of wood together and put three screws in the end. Then we added another piece of wood and more screws. Repeat that one more time and then attach the last end with three more screws. Voila!
I can't believe how incredibly easy and quick these were to make. Tomorrow, I'm going to finish up weeding the ground underneath where we want to put the boxes in our yard and then we will be ready for soil and seeds.
