You can make a great raised bed, hot house, or hoop house from an old refrigerator. This instruct able is for a quick and easy hot house for your plants. You can use it with or without hoops and plastic. The insulation on the inside of the refrigerator helps keep it warm. If you want to try your hand at aqua-ponics or hydroponics this is an almost ready made tank. I have added a few sketch up plans at the end for different variations of the hot box including a hydroponics tank. So get you green on, with this up-cycled refrigerator garden

Supplies list

What's Growing in your Refrigerator?
1 broken refrigerator

2 cans black spray paint

3 pieces of 10 foot metal conduit pipe

1 old tire with a rim

6 piece of 2 foot or scrap re-bar that will fit inside your conduit pipe

1 10 foot length of rope

Roll of duct tape

Bag of zip ties

8 foot of Velcro tape

Plastic sheeting opaque or clear

Step 1:

Collect your Supplies

Step 2:

Go to you local Dump ask for a broken refrigerator or freezer ask them to remove the freon some waste stations will do this for you or you can call a refrigeration repair man to do this.If you can find a black one you can skip spray painting.

Find a sunny location; Lay your refrigerator on its back (its back now becomes the bottom) remove the doors and hinges from the fridge.

Spray paint the refrigerator black let it dry. The black paint helps to absorb heat.

Step 3:

You need drain holes its easy to punch them you can use a hammer and chisel or a drill. punch them randomly on the now bottom of the refrigerator.

Add your Soil and a bit of water.

Plant your seeds or starter plants

Step 4:

Drive 3 pieces of re-bar into the ground on each side of the refrigerator 1 piece in the center and 1 at each end on each side. This needs to be against the refrigerator, your hoops will slide over the re-bar.

Step 5:

Bend your conduit, Have 1 person sit on the tire with rim, place the center of the rebar against the tire and have 2 other people help bend the conduit pipe. Have 1 person on each end of the pipe pulling the ends around the tire to form a nice hoop. Do the same for the other 2 pieces of conduit. (I had to hold the camera but Davids foot worked great to hold the tire in place) Bend each piece.

Step 6:

Set the conduit pipe over the re-bar, take your rope and tie it on each pipe down the top center.

Step 7:

Put Plastic over the conduit and fridge, duct tape one side down. Place duct tape along the edges of the plastic to the fridge, Pull it tight.

on the side of the refrigerator you do not plan on having easy access to zip tie the plastic to the hoops from the center to the bottom of each hoop on one side. (To keep from tearing the plastic put a piece of duct tape where you are going to zip tie and run zip ties through it.)

Step 8:

On the side you want easy access about 3/4 the way down the hoops from the top center run a strip of duct tape the full length across add your zip ties above the tape line onto each hoop, at the bottom of the plastic cut sections of Velcro, stick one side to the plastic and stick the other side to the refrigerator, this allows for easy access to your plants and holds the plastic in place. Cut the excess plastic off.

You hot house for your plants.

Step 9: More Ideas

You can do a lot with a broken refrigerator from worm farms to aqua-ponics here is a couple more ideas on how you can go extra green with your garden project. Just FYI my hot house stays warm enough that i can grow through December in Homer Alaska. Almost forgot if it is above 35 degrees F. outside leave the ends open or you will burn your plants, the insulation on the refrigerator works well.