Hello everyone!

In this time of confinement I luckily continue to work, but being always at home I have also the time to finally realise a small project I had in mind since a while: home garden for some vegetables!

So this is a totally recycling project using just what I had lying around. Lucky me I happened to have a couple of wood wine boxes (some others I used as simple stockage space) and a broken structure of a bed from IKEA.

So lets get creative and use all of what we have!

Bare in mind I did everything in my very small apartment in Paris, with very few tools (no fancy workshop). So except for the raw materials, that you need to have or find, you don't have excuses!

Supplies

Materials

Some wine boxes (the thicker the better for better listing in time)
Scrap wood boards
Wood screws
Protective oil

Tools

Hand saw (or more advanced cutting machines)
Electric drill with wood bits
Sand paper

Garden

Geotextile
Multipurpose soil
Clay drainage balls (pro tip)
Plants of choice

Step 1: Design

First of all look at what you have available.

Start with the boxes and try to imagine a final set up for your multilevel garden (it could be also a single box, so it's just a matter of fixing some feet to elevate it from ground and it's ready).

I had two boxes of different dimensions and some wood pieces (leftovers of a broken IKEA pine wood bed, I think TARVA) so I went for a two level garden with overlapping of the two boxes.

With that in mind I needed 4 feet to raise the bottom box and allow draining of excess water and 4 "supports" to fix and raise the second box.

I had the chance the two boxes allow for a very nice overlapping with some space for tall plants at ground level (say tomatoes or bell peppers) and a two levels part.

Having the general design in mind, let's adapt it to what we have...

Step 2: Preparation

Let's start wit cutting all the pieces to length. The dimensions are of choice, but I tried to allow enough space between the boxes in order no to block sunlight and at the same time keeping a compact and stable design.

With the wood scraps I had I went for creating the feet with a rectangular board, cutting four 8cm pieces to allow for ventilation and draining of the excess water of the bottom box.

With the same logic I cut the 4 pillars tu support the smaller box. You'll notice that two of them are from the rectangular board, this is what I had (I made the two supports and the four feet out of the same board) but il allows me also to easily divide the bottom box into two separate soil zones.

With all the pieces ready, I decided to roughly sand all the surfaces and put a protective oil to extend the life of the garden. I'll probably put a second coat on. To maximize protection search for a proper protective oil or varnish and follow the instructions on how to apply it on wood.

Another step you'll want to do also is to create some holes on the bottom of the boxes with a big drill bit in order to allow the excessive water to flow out the box and not immediately ruin your recycled wood garden. (I'll do it later before putting the soil inside)

Step 3: Assembly

Starting with the legs: you'll see the layout I choose, it give stabilitys and actually simplify the fixing.

To fix the legs I double taped them to the bottom in order to keep them in place, then used a long wood screw for each of them fixing from inside the box, always drilling a small hole before in order to guide the screw and not crack the wood.

Ba aware that I was fixing the legs very close to the borders, this translated to a bit of difficulty to screw in more than one screw. I ended up using one big screw in the centre (easy access for the drill from the inside) and a couple of nails on the sides of each foot.

I then proceeded to fix the corner legs with two screws on each side and one from the bottom of the box. The layout of the feet allowed me to actually screw the pillars from the bottom.

For the central pillars I took some measures with the small box. Because I wanted to fix the box with screws from the inside, I needed the pillars to fall inside the bottom of the small box to have the space to put a screw. Found the position, I used two screws on the sides and two from the bottom.

I then Finished the assembly placing and aligning the smaller bow and fixing it with some screws.

To do a clean work I measured and properly placed the screws.