Scrap Wood Garden Planters

I was recently offered some scrap pine car siding. Not being one to turn down free wood, I took it. I stewed for a week or two on what I would do with it. After it was brought to my attention by my wife that we didn't have any garden planters, I thought it would be pretty neat to make them out of this scrap. It was super easy to make and the best part is that it was mostly free. Even better, if I wanted to make more, car siding really isn't that expensive.

What you'll need

• Car siding or some other scrap wood (really, any wood will work)
• Table or circular saw
• Router (if using the type of joinery we did)
• Wood glue
• Your choice of stains and finishes (we used a medium shade stain and Tung Oil)

Make sure you check out the video, it shows a bit more of each step than the images do. Please enjoy and if you make it or something like it, we'd love to see it. Share it with us on here or on Facebook, Google+, etc.

Since the tongue and groove of these boards wasn't going to work for this project, I ripped the boards down just past the edge of each tongue and each groove. I wanted to keep the v-groove, though, so I tried my best to keep it centered when ripping. This is pretty straight forward and you can figure out how far you want to cut in by lining up either the groove or the tongue with the kerf of the blade.

I used router to create a dado down the backside edges of two of the boards. The router was set so there was just a sliver of wood on the outer edge of the dado; maybe 1/8 to 1/16 of and inch. This served no purpose. I just thought it would make it look neat and give it kind of a shipping crate feel when assembled.

The glue-up is pretty straight forward as well. The two boards that don't have the dados get glued into the two that do. You're basically creating a tall box. Of course, once every thing is in place you'll want to clamp it for a while. One thing to double check while you're doing this is to see if the v-groove is facing out on all sides. Other than that this step is quick and simple.

I used calipers to figure out the size I needed for the bottom. I just spread the caliper to the dimensions needed and scribed it right onto another piece of wood with the calipers. Then I cut the bottom out on the band saw and glued it and nailed it in place.

NOTE - You may want to add drainage holes as well to the bottom. This was an afterthought, but probably a good idea.

We finished the whole planter with a stain and Tung Oil.

This might be one of the simplest projects we've ever done and quite honestly it was pretty fun. Some times the quick and easy builds are just as fun and rewarding as the big complex ones.

We decided to plant some flowers in them that would spill over the side. Since they are a taller type of planter, we thought it would look pretty cool.

We hope you enjoyed this DIY project and the video that goes along with it. If you have any questions or comments please let us know, we'd be more than happy to help you out. Thanks for checking out this Instructable.