So....Jen's been all about getting a garden going since we moved in here, but the landscape and tree shade doesn't really lend itself to doing this. So we decided (i.e. she decided) to try container gardening. We picked up some cheap plastic one's, but at the advice of a neighbor of ours we decided to try to build some nice cedar wood ones to match the deck. To be honest it was pathetically easy to do.... So we swung by the local hardware store, and picked up two 6'x10" cedar boards for about $9 bucks each. I already had a box of 3" long deck screws at home, and we decided to use them rather than depend on nails. Now the only real trick with using screws is that the best thing to do is to drill pilot holes for all of them. The reason being is this....screws tend to compress the wood...which causes splitting, but nails tear through the wood fibers. So the solution is to drill pilot holes so your not compressing the wood fibers. Of course there are special screws you can buy...but a little time saves a little money. Anyways here's a few pictures of the building process:
We decided that width was more important that height, so we attached the two boards to the ends of the bottom. Then we simply cut some end pieces out of the remainder of wood left from the 2nd piece. I ended up using 5 screws each on these pieces and only 3 on the larger ones. Then using the scrap that was left we made some cheap and quick legs for it. > And there ya have it, took about an hour or so and cost less than 20 bucks.