Another scrap wood planter

Posted by louisa on Monday 7 March 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 1 comment

It was too nice today to sit inside – a cold, dull start but warmer this afternoon with some lovely soft winter sun lighting up the trees in the wood.

We had a lovely walk in the woods at lunchtime – we took out the neighbours’ year old springer spaniel as well as ten year old Lily, which was a fun change of pace. Sometimes Lily exhausts herself trying to keep up with him but today she was happy for him to run around like a crazy thing while she pottered along. We pottered too – he ran around more than enough for all of us.

After we’d got home from that, I did a quick hours work then headed into the garden to make another scrap wood planter. John’s dad brings us lots of short lengths of scrap timber – the end of planks from a joiners – which aren’t long enough to do much with, but I had an idea the other day for using them to make a planter – and this is the result:

Whenever I’m doing anything with wood, I try to minimise the amount of sawing I have to do because I’m lazy (and have an aversion to sawing after having an awful saw for a long time – the current one is actually really good and easy to use). Conveniently all the flat pieces for the sides and the battens for the bottom were already cut to size – or rather, the sides were all the same size and I let than dictate the height/width of the planter, then found enough suitably sized battens to fit along the bottom. It’s about 1m/3ft long and about 30cm/1ft wide & tall.

Like the other ones I’ve built, it’s made completely from scrap – the short lengths and reusing lengths of structural timber/decking that John’s dad has reclaimed/skip-dived – and I’ll line it with soil bags etc so the only cost are the screws. That was not inconsiderably on this one though – I used a lot of screws! – but at least it’ll double as a really small bomb shelter if we ever have another blitz. ;) If some flat wood – about 1cm by 5cm – turns up, I might use it to make a pretty lip to cover up (and protect) the top rim.

I’m really enjoying making these planters at the moment and hope to get another couple made before I need to start concentrating on planting things in them!

Wooden planters made from scrap wood

Posted by louisa on Monday 31 January 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 6 comments

Last week, I got the cravings – the “I NEED to make something out of wood” cravings – so I set Saturday aside for playing.

I actually set out into the garden to make one thing but found some planks (the long bits in the picture) that would be much more appropriate for something else on my to-do list – wooden planters. John’s dad had brought them for us last week – he regularly collects scraps of wood from a joiners’ yard for firewood and when he visited that day, they gave him these salvaged planks too – but he thought they were too good for firewood so they ended up in our general scrap lumber pile instead. The shorter bits in the picture are also scrap wood from the same source – all roughly about the same size so almost no sawing required!

With that scrap, and five 6ft long battens (leftover from when I built removable shelves in our airing cupboard), I made two planters – each about 4ft long by 1ft, by about 9ins deep.

The bases are different because each batten made exactly one long length and two shorter lengths – I was delighted to find it was pretty much exact, again minimal sawing! – and that was the most efficient way to make use of the wood.

I’ll use a liner of some sort in the planters and puncture that between the slats of the base for drainage. I added little feet to the bottom (in a way appropriate to the base) to raise the slats off the ground too. The whole thing will need treating with some veg-safe preservative too, to maximise it’s usefulness.

Neither planter would get me a job as an artisan woodworker or would be used as a practical example to teach even spacing or the concept of right angles – but they’ll grow salad (or similar) as well as planters that would cost me £50 each from a garden centre. Plus I had loads of fun making them :)

I think these will go in the front garden – we have some dead space out there which I’d like to make useful this year. Not sure exactly what we’ll plant in them yet – I really need to get on with planning where everything is going to go this year!