Materials for Square Foot Gardens

Video Transcript

"Hi. This is Yolanda Vanveen on behalf of Expert Village. In this series, we are talking about square foot gardening and in this segment, we will talk about what materials are needed to create your own square foot garden. The basis of your garden or your raised bed is going to be the wood. So, to create your four by four garden, you need to go to the lumber yard to get your wood. And when you purchase wood, it comes in 2x8x8 sections. And most lumber yards will cut them into smaller pieces and all you have to do is ask (they may charge a small fee). But, we just asked for them to be cut into 2x8x4 pieces and it was really easy. They had the wood all ready to go. So, now I have four 2x8x4 pieces of wood that I'm going to put into a square. It's as simple as that. To put the wood together, you are going to need a couple of materials. Here, I have a wood boring bit and an electric screw driver. I have a little mallet, I've got either a wrench or a rachet and socket wrench, which I think works the best and then I've got 5/16 lag bolts that are three inches long. So they are 5/16 x 3 inches lag bolts. Then, I've got washers that are 5/16 that I'm going to put inside the bolts so that the bolts don't eventually over the years give into the wood and they stay on the outside of the wood. I've got my tape measure so that I can measure where I'm going to put my holes and how long all of the little sections are going to be. I have a box cutter because it works really well to cut my pest barrier. And I have an extra pair of scissors too, just in case. The best way to make your one foot by one foot squares within your four by four square foot garden is to use vinyl strips. These are just strips that we found at the home supply store and it's used for edging around grass and other plants. So, when I'm going to put this together, I will cut this into pieces and we'll cut slits in them, and we'll combine them vertically and horizontally to make a grid inside the box. So, I really don't need a lot of materials to create your square foot garden. In the next segment, we'll talk about how to create it."