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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

    You can find me writing for HGTV and DIY Network, follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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How to Make Easy Raised Planter Boxes

August 5, 2017

Ready to make some raised planters that’ll hold up really, really well? No bolts, no screws, simple design. After you make the cuts they assemble securely with pieces of rebar.

The interlocking design shown way back when on an episode of Desperate Landscapes on DIY Network was both pretty and a little different, appealing to me because it meant that the exposed edges would be free of bolts and screws holding the assemblage whole. By bolting downwards through the corners, the team had achieved a clean-lined look, and that, I liked. Real snapshot from the TV on my phone for future reference? Sure:

Jason Cameron does planter boxes right.

We decided that using pieces of 1/2″ x 18″ rebar straight through the wood into the ground might be a less-expensive alternative, and also help to anchor the planters into the ground a little bit. This sweet little artwork was designed on Paper.

Planning the planting boxes, thanks to Paper.

Having priced out some of these planter options at a range of places from hardware stores to places like Williams-Sonoma, I knew they could run upwards in price really quickly, especially with a name brand or specific high-quality lumber attached to it. I considered making mine out of cedar to withstand the test of time a little longer than pine, but pricing is always a consideration and for the amount of lumber I decidedly wanted, I still hoped to keep the whole construction under $50.

Here’s what I picked up:

  • Four 2x8x8′ pine boards ($2.90/each)
  • Four 2x4x8′ pine boards ($6.44/each)
  • 8 pieces of 1/2″x18″ rebar ($1.57/each)

A few notes:

  • I considered going low-rise with just one 2×8 height board, but I worried about the dog overstepping his boundaries. And a dog who oversteps boundaries will be peeing in my tomatoes.
  • Two 8″ boards felt a little tall when I stacked them as a visual in Lowe’s. And would have cost me an extra $15.
  • One 2×12 board felt thick and heavy and just too monstrous. You know how those boards just look like they’re designed with withstand 10,000 pounds of pressure and will require you to find two extra sets of hands to load them into your Jeep? That’s too much weight for something light and veggie-filled in the backyard.
  • The combination of a sturdy 2×8 combined with a lighter 2×4 for accent and a slight rise in wall height felt like the right balance in the end, less heavy than if it were a solid 12″ board.
  • And of course if you’re doing this at home, do what’s right for your situation. Change the specs, make it taller, shorter, whatever works for you.

I cut the boards in half into 48″ pieces, because to keep things simple, developing a set of 4’x4′ boxes would be easy and efficient. In sets of four (representing each box) I clamped the wood together tightly, and marked off where it would need to be cut on each end to fit in an interlocked pattern. Binding the pieces together just made my cuts happen a little more efficiently than if I were doing singular cuts on the deck with the circular saw.

Clamped together, ready for cutting.

For the 2×8 boards, I used a speed square to measure and mark the notches at 1-1/2″ x 3-1/2″. That’s exactly the board width x half of the real board height.

Notched and ready for cuts.

When it comes to making these cuts, pay attention to the depth of your circular saw blade. For the shallow cuts, I was able to set the circular saw to 1.5″ deep, but with the deeper cut I was only able to go up to 2.5″ deep.

Set the circular saw blade to only cut to a certain depth.

Which is why I was left to cut through the rest of the way by handsaw and multitool with a cutter attachment. Pete promptly reminded me this morning that we have a sawzall for jobs like this, I forgot, and my triceps are making me pay for it.

Set the circular saw blade to only cut to a certain depth, and then cut the rest of the way by hand or by using a sawzall.

My cuts were nowhere near as smooth as what I saw on TV. And that’s why I’m not on TV.

Notching out the planter boxes.

Just to note: In notching both ends of each board, both the 2×8’s and the 2×4’s, I notched on the same side of each board, so the notches when facing upward were all facing the sun, not one side facing the sun and one side facing the ground. Know what I’m trying to say? Probably not. They fit together as a puzzle easily as you’ll see, but an easy puzzle. An ages 3+ puzzle.

Assembling the puzzle was easy enough too. I started by predrilling the holes for the rebar to extend through in each corner, using some cinder blocks as convenient anchors. Using the electric drill gave me a lot of power consistently through all of the boards, and a 5/8″ paddle bit widened a path for the 1/2″ rebar to glide through with not-too-much-and-just-enough friction.

Cinderblocks. Always handy for anchoring lumber in place.

Cinderblocks. Always handy for anchoring lumber in place. By then hauling them out into the lawn, the 4 sides came together quite easily; once one piece of rebar was in, the structure stayed upright and made configuring the other three corners a snap.

Pinning rebar into the corner of the box planter.

When the planters are positioned, each piece of rebar will receive some clean thwaps to hammer them into the soft ground. When they’re level with the top piece of wood, there’ll be no chance of dog and kid injuries while we play and romp in the backyard.

Stepping back and looking at the set wholly, they’re pretty cool. And bigger than I expected 16-sq.ft. pieces to be. Not as nice as the ones I saw crafted on TV, mostly because I’m no first-rate craftsman, but they’ll be great to house tomatoes and flowers in the backyard this summer.

 New set of planter boxes.

There’s still more work to be done – you can read more here about how I dug a bed for them to sit over, brought in potting soil and fertilizer, and created a nice garden environment in the backyard.

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Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

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  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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    Highly recco mining those #herkimerdiamonds ✌️ Highly recco mining those #herkimerdiamonds ✌️
    Pt. 2: Well before Halloween, the last of the garl Pt. 2: Well before Halloween, the last of the garlic went into the home garden: 10 rows [L>R] 6 whole Nootka Rose as an experiment, 3x8 Mennonite-grown cloves from Aman’s, and 6x8 (and, I think, total 112? notes are cryptic) “normal.”
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    Out of sight but [documented so it’s] not out of Out of sight but [documented so it’s] not out of mind! #garden2024 kicks off with my favorite biennial: elephant garlic! 15 cloves planted from small, to medium, to enormous. #gardennotes
    Annual garlic notes for #garden2023, pt. 1: this i Annual garlic notes for #garden2023, pt. 1: this is getting ooc, and I love it. 👩‍🌾🧑‍🌾

🧄 65% of the planting is in a new plot in the country. 🧄 Seeing if NR grows bigger with more sunlight. 🧄 Big @chasefarms cloves from 2021 were really productive in our home garden; can’t wait to see how they can show up next year in the new space. 🧄

Hand-turned a small bed, but big thanks to my sister, who rolled into town just in time to help me double its size (and did not complain once).
    One straggler from #garlic2021 debuted with 7 stal One straggler from #garlic2021 debuted with 7 stalks and 7 scapes, and I can’t wait to see this mammoth looks like when it’s pulled next month. #garlic2022 

Also, fierce springtime performance by parsley, chamomile, and self-seeded cilantro.
    Annual garlic notes #garden2022 ~315 cloves total Annual garlic notes #garden2022
~315 cloves total
50 in new, unfenced garden
Still need thick mulch on everything
Did a terrible job tracking varieties when I harvested, so it’s all a mix of hardneck now 😒
Added some big cloves from @chasefarms and look forward to adding some @fruition_seeds in #garden2023 when @porterfarmscsa delivers.
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