Metal Planting Boxes

We knew we wanted to build planting boxes for our vegetable garden. Our zone 24 garden we builded the boxes out of recycled lumber. This time round for our Temecula zone 18 garden, we were inspired by Sunset Garden article How to build raised beds with  scrap metal. Two pictures of inspirational garden below.

It was amazing how difficult it was to find salvage metal sheet at a reasonable price. What ended happening was we had planter made out of new steel plates at a cheaper price! The boxes had to have braces on the inside  to keep its shape. Our planter boxes were of various sizes. We kept the width of the boxes to 4 ft wide so that we that we can reach the plants from both sides.

The length of the boxes varied from 4, 6 to 8 feet. This allows for different configuration. The finished open bottom boxes were heavy. We had to use the bobcat tractor to get it off the truck and to help place the planter boxes in place.

Rough initial placement of planter boxes on both sides of the patio. At this point the boxes were looking too big for the spot and we struggled with the design. It was too `hard' looking.

In the end, we decided we needed to create a patio like flooring for the area. We broke the slate slabs into larger pieces, laying them down on the ground and adjusted the spacing of the planter boxes till it looked good. We had to work with the existing Queen Palms that we decided to keep. Finely, we filled the space between the slate pieces with the pebbles we were using as ground cover.

Prior to laying down the slate flooring, we had dug trenches and lay down the irrigation pipings. You can see where the irrigation pipe comes up within the planter boxes. Later, we will connect irrigation tubes and heads for the individual bed from this main line within the planter bed. 

Update 2/13/2012

We filled the metal planter boxes with our special blend planting mix. However, the planter boxes took more material than we anticipated. Opps! wrong calculation. Looks like we are going to have to order more materials. We are on our way to an edible garden!!