Building our first SFG boxes!

My wonderful hubby built 2 boxes for the garden on Saturday. Woohoo! We put weed barrier and chicken wire on the bottom (I know, not quite as good as hardware cloth, but so much cheaper) on one, but still need to put those on the second box. Still gathering MM ingredients. I will post more pix when they are filled and have trellises, etc.

3x6x8" box. We were originally going to use cedar pickets but decided they might not hold up well since they are so thing. We used cedar1"x8"x6', they were on sale at Menards. We used 2x2's in the corners, but they didn't have it in cedar so I we may have to replace them sooner. We put a 2x2 support in the bottom to have something to help support the weed barrier if it's filled and we need to move it next year.


The 3' wide chicken wire we bought wasn't really 3' it was only 35" wide, and because of the way we built the box, we needed more like 37" sooooo we used some 4' wide wire we had and had to fold over the extra.





and we were supposed to do more work today because hubby's on spring break from the university where he teaches, but it's raining. But at least we got a lot done and we're officially started.

Do you have any idea how envious I am of you??

Seriously though.....that looks really nice. I have to get off my backside and get mine done. I don't even have the wood ordered yet. Seeing your pictures hopefully will give me the kick in the pants to get mine done.

That looks great

So pretty! Keep the pictures coming! Hope the rain clears and you can be outside for spring break!

Yay! Looking good! Hmmm... I was just looking at cedar at Lowes and thought I'd decided that the fence pickets were thick enough considering how much cheaper they are. Maybe I should re-think.

I was going to make my boxes out of cedar but it's too expensive. I found a sawmill a few miles from my house that has hemlock(which has good rot/weather resistance) a lot cheaper. A 2 inch by 12 inch by 10 foot plank is around 11 bucks.

Thanks everyone! And the rain stopped early and with a good wind and a sunny warm day, it dried off enough to finish the boxes and do some more yard work. YAY!

Too Tall Tomatoes wrote:Do you have any idea how envious I am of you??

Seriously though.....that looks really nice. I have to get off my backside and get mine done. I don't even have the wood ordered yet. Seeing your pictures hopefully will give me the kick in the pants to get mine done.

Yeah, I understand that, I'm a major procrastinator. But I'm really eager to get started and when my husband said, "I want to build those boxes on my week off," I jumped at the offer. I really didn't want to build them alone.

Too Tall Tomatoes wrote:I was going to make my boxes out of cedar but it's too expensive. I
found a sawmill a few miles from my house that has hemlock(which has
good rot/weather resistance) a lot cheaper. A 2 inch by 12 inch by 10
foot plank is around 11 bucks.

That sounds like a good price for that size.

gwennifer wrote: Yay! Looking good! Hmmm... I was just looking at cedar at Lowes and
thought I'd decided that the fence pickets were thick enough considering
how much cheaper they are. Maybe I should re-think.

Ours were about $6.30 for the 1x8x6'. So around $21 per box instead of $8.50 with the pickets. The pickets may work fine, we just didn't know. And they are rough all around and as much money as we are putting into the whole project an extra $13 didn't seem like that much to have a nicer box.

Hey Kate888 I just want to thank you for giving me the kick in the pants I needed. I stopped by the lumber mill and ordered everything I need for my
4 ft x 10 ft boxes. All the wood cut and delivered is 200 bucks. All I do is just screw the planks together.

Thanks again!

Monday we finally got the last of the MM ingredients and got to work mixing. One of the many advantages to a large family, the mixing and filling wasn't too bad.


We wanted to use wood lathe, but since we could only get a big bundle for $9 rather than individual pieces that were listed on the Lowe's website, I opted for twine. (We are still working on the gravel bed for our sfg boxes. We ran out of time, so just had to put the boxes on one half and we'll keep working on it.


I might need to rethink that, because something chewed through it!


I was really eager to plant right away, but didn't have time Monday. And Tuesday and Wednesday nights were both supposed to get below freezing, so it was hard, but I waited. Wednesday I did plant seeds - peas, lettuce, radish and spinach. But not until I replaced the twine and then covered up with some beautiful tulle. :-) It was leftover from my son's wedding reception and I don't have any other use for it. It looks a little funny but I didn't have to buy something new.



I planted my broccoli, brussel sprouts and lettuce starts today.


This little guy came by pretty soon after. Don't remember seeing this type before and can't id it by a web search. hmmmm Any ideas?


So now that I have actual plants, the tulle needs to be held up. This is just a makeshift cover until I figure out something better. I got a little carried away and planted the lettuce without sufficiently hardening off (what was I thinking) so I put a double layer of floating row cover to shade it from the sun. And I guess I'll give it blanket tonight since it will still be quite cool. The brussels and broccoli were hardened off properly.

Kate - I would just get a couple of cheap pieces of 1/2" PVC - 10 footers at least. Stick one end in the inside corner of the box and bend the other end down and stick it against the other inside corner. It should now be a half circle spanning the diagonal of your box. Do the same with a second piece and now they should be like an X shaped hoop over your box. Take twine or a cable tie and secure the two together where they cross at the top center. Now you have a structure over which to put your tulle... You may, however, need a wider piece of tulle (or to sew some pieces together).

Your set-up looks nice. I had the same dilemma with the cedar pickets being cheaper but I decided to use them anyways. I built 2 boxes that are a little less than 3' by 6' and I braced them across the middle of the bottom. One is filled and it seems to be fine, the sides aren't bowed out or anything(not sure if this will change once the plants start taking off).

UnderTheBlackWalnut wrote:Kate - I would just get a couple of cheap pieces of 1/2" PVC - 10 footers at least. Stick one end in the inside corner of the box and bend the other end down and stick it against the other inside corner. It should now be a half circle spanning the diagonal of your box. Do the same with a second piece and now they should be like an X shaped hoop over your box. Take twine or a cable tie and secure the two together where they cross at the top center. Now you have a structure over which to put your tulle... You may, however, need a wider piece of tulle (or to sew some pieces together).

+1 UTBW. Home Depot or Lowes has schedule 80 (grey stuff ) pvc pipe. The schedule 80 grey pipe is usually located in the electrical dept. as its typically used for underground electrical conduit. It will survive the elements longer outside, plus it's usually a tad cheaper than the sched 40. Either or should cost you under $2 per 10' stick.
And Kate, your garden is looking great Keep us posted!

It looks great! I'm thinking of using some tulle for my shade cloth this summer...it's been sitting around for a while, gathering dust and taking up space, so I'm thinking I've found my use for it!

BTW, my husband is a professor, too!

@Kate......I bought a package of 8 wire clothes hangers from the dollar store and use those. I shape them into a hoop after unwinding them.



Just stick them in the soil around the plants and cover with whatever.

I use tulle each year to cover the strawberries! I leave the ends open for the bees. That way I get some instead of the birds....well unless you count one little bird beaked 2 yr old that has ESP for NaNa's harvesting!

I actually have the pvc conduit, but the tulle is only 4' wide. If I'd thought about it before I took it out I should have sewn 2 strips together. I'll either have to do that or buy some netting. The other thing I need to figure out is that both boxes will have a trellis, so not sure how to have the pvc through the trellis. Gotta think it all through, but I didn't want to wait to plant so I did what I could for now.

Thanks for the comments!

Kate888 wrote:I actually have the pvc conduit, but the tulle is only 4' wide. If I'd thought about it before I took it out I should have sewn 2 strips together. I'll either have to do that or buy some netting. The other thing I need to figure out is that both boxes will have a trellis, so not sure how to have the pvc through the trellis. Gotta think it all through, but I didn't want to wait to plant so I did what I could for now.

Thanks for the comments!

We're going to attach our trellises to the outside of the boxes. Your PVC will go inside the boxes, and if you attach your trellises outside there won't be a problem with the tulle then. You shouldn't need to start training your plants upward before the tulle can come off for the summer, right?

Sorry, I haven't posted in a while. I've been quite busy with the gardens my new chicks, softball season (my girls are finally done with it) and 4H projects (not quite done, but almost).

I thought I'd check in and see the pictures of your gardens everyone is posting.

I'm very happy with how our veggies are doing so far. Our broccoli and lettuce produced wonderfully and we also had some nice spinach. All of those are done now. Just pulled the lettuce as it turned bitter in the last week. I was so sad to see it go. I had covered it with a shade cloth, but our very hot spring was apparently too much.









Right now we've just got some green onions and a small amount of peapods. But the tomatoes and peppers are growing wonderfully (all except one small pepper, don't know why). The zucchini and yellow squash are in my old regular garden, but look to be doing wonderfully. And I was given free watermelon and honeydew melon starts and tossed them in my old huge overgrown garden. It was mostly dried old weeds and leaves with a small amount of green weeds. So, I scraped away enough to find the soil underneath and all I plan to do is just water them and we'll see if they make it.

I hope to add a couple more boxes next year so I can stop using the old beds. The squash do well enough there, but it's a pain so far from the other beds and I just love my SFG beds .

Happy you dropped in to share some great pictures of your gardens Kate

it's really nice !



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