How to Build Your Own Square Foot Gardening Box

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Spring is her! We have seeds started, we’ve got our gardening gear ready, and we’ve got big plans this year.

We a variation of Square Foot Gardening. Even though I’m not a fan of measuring and calculating, I like knowing that our raised garden beds are maximizing their space.

Making Your Own SFG Box Plans

The point when your garden physically takes shape is when you build own SFG box because you get to see up close where all the plants will live and grow.

By building your own box, you learn a little something about independence and achievement.

Building your SFG box is a great opportunity to teach kids about using power tools [or any other tools] safely.

The Materials for a Square Foot Gardening Box

Start the great big SFG box adventure by gathering all of the required materials. And, wow, there are a lot of possibilities.

The SFG box can be built out of just about any material as long as it meets certain restrictions.

First and most important: the material cannot contain anything that might contaminate the soil and get into the plants growing there. That means paint or preservatives used to treat wood, or oil-based paints on metal or bricks are no-nos.

This especially includes treated lumber, unfortunately. Older, reclaimed treated lumber (the good stuff) is soaked in formaldehyde. Newer stuff that doesn’t last anyways, is soaked in a variety of other toxic chemicals.

Even though you can use many different materials, most people choose wood for good reasons. Wood is a natural, replaceable material, it’s easy to work with, easy to find, inexpensive, and looks good.

Start with what an SFG box must be. We want our box to be:

3 feet x 3 feet.

Square.
6 inches deep.
Durable.

Portable, if we want to move it later.
Nice to look at.

So with all that in mind, let’s ask a few questions about what might be the best material for our SFG boxes.

Why is wood a good choice for the SFG box?
What other materials could we use?
What about glass? Could you use glass for the box?

Why or why not?

What about metals?
- What different types of metals are there?
- Which would be best for a box and why?
Where would we find those metals?
- What would be some of the challenges in using metals?

What about bricks or concrete blocks?
- What would be good or bad about using bricks or concrete blocks?

Generally, wood is going to work best. So the instructions that follow are geared to using wood for a box.

Putting Together a SFG Box

Now that you’ve gathered the materials, it’s time to get organized and build that SFG box. Let’s get started with a few safety rules to make sure this is a happy experience for everyone.

Setting Up Your Work Site

Set up your work site as close as possible to where your SFG box will ultimately go. The best place is a flat, level surface with lots of room to move around.

It’s always a good idea to make an actual staging area. This can be a driveway, a tarp laid out on the grass, or even a large piece of plywood or cardboard.

The idea is to keep tools and materials in one place while you work, because sometimes in all the excitement of building something, tools and materials can seem to walk away.

Collect all the materials you’ll need for the project and organize them in the staging area.

For the wood box we’ll be building, you’ll need the following:

4 boards, 3 feet long x 6 inches wide (should be I or 2 inches thick)
4 pieces of lath, 3 feet long
A writing utensil like a construction pencil

Cordless drill and bits
12 deck screws
I roll of landscape fabric (see if you can buy a piece just 3 feet long at a garden center, or a pre-fab SFG box kit usually comes with the weed fabric and grid)