DIY: Raised Garden, Out of Scraps.

If you're reading this and the price of lumber is still through the roof, It might seem like a good idea to begin DIYing with reused materials.

I'm in the unique position of both needing to get rid of some old wood from some shelves, and to build a raised garden. And for many the idea of doing this is intriguing, yet daunting, due to most not knowing where to start.

Following the general steps in this instructable will help give you the courage to up-cycle old scraps, and start building things more creatively.

The main criteria here was to make at least two raised bed, and to not buy any more wood than I had here.

(1) pile of old wood scraps

(1) box construction screws 11/2" (apx 150 in box)

(1) drill

(1) circular saw

(1) jigsaw (optional)

(1) hammer

The difference between the picture from the first step and this picture are night and day.

First we must begin by disassembling all of the scraps, such as we did with the ladder looking part from the first picture. This is easily done by hitting everything with a hammer like a bat out of, well just hit stuff. But be safe.

Safety first, then teamwork.

Next, with all the nails removed it is important to sort though your scrap wood to identify key strengths and weaknesses you have.

With the plywood being identified as the most important part of this project, cut this in half longwise. The width of each one of these pieces will be the width of the raised garden.

This was decided because without a consistent piece for the dirt to rest on, there essentially is no raised be, but rather a raised straining system.

As mentioned in the previous step. This project's make or brake point comes from the identification of the most important pieces of scrap.

The boards shown above came as seen on the left, and there were only three of them. It was decided that they would be used to surround the perimeters. Therefore, we needed to cut two of them in half(one board per raised garden,) to have long pieces for the sides.

The third board would be strategically cut to cover the four small sides of the garden.

Although it would have been sweet to have the raised bed as long as these pieces originally were, We had to cut them according to the length we set in the last step.

the two bottom rectangles are the two bottoms of the raised gardens.

We then proceed to find four pieces of wood that were roughly the same in dimension, that we would begin to cut for the legs of the raised gardens.

We cut two 30" pieces of wood from each piece of scrap. Once we were done we had a total of eight pieces. All of the legs were nearly all the same size. And this was important for the next step.

With the leg dimensions discovered, use them as a stencil for tracing the cutouts as seen in the pictures.

With the stencils marked, there are two ways to cut the clearings, either use a jigsaw, (which I prefer) or use the circular saw.

Cut the clearings and move on to the next step.

For all four of the long sides, screw on the board sidings.

Begin by only drilling one corner of each leg at a time, and then the other end of the board.

It should be A -> B -> C -> D, as seen in the image.

At the end, the raised garden should be sturdy.

Cut a piece of scrap to fit as shown in the picture.

Screw this piece in from the outside of the board sidings. This part should be directly in the middle.

Add the piece of plywood for the bottom now.

For added support screw a screw in the point where the plywood bottom is perpendicular with the leg. But only screw the screw in half way.

Aside from adding some sort of drainage method and/or liners, this build is done.