Hexagon Planter Box

We are getting excited about Spring around here!  We've been thinking about the vegetable garden since November but there was one thing missing in our plans, the actual garden.  The only bare piece of land on our small city lot was under an English Walnut tree and nothing grows under an English Walnut tree (seriously, the oil on their leaves, stems and nuts are toxic to most plants).  So we did the next best thing and made some planter boxes.

Let me back up a little,  Last summer we were at our neighborhood nursery and saw these really cool hexagon planter boxes.  They were $55 each!  I really liked the design because they were small enough to be portable and they could link together nicely for a big-ish planting area.  But $55, seriously?  We figured we could make them a lot cheaper.

We decided to try our hand at it and make three.  If there was space and we wanted to plant more later, we could easily knock out another one.  So, off to the hardware store we went.

We picked up untreated 2X8's. It's important to buy untreated wood as you're going to plant food in them and don't want any unnecessary chemicals leaching into the soil from the chemicals on the wood.

Using a circular saw we cut them into 18 inch pieces.  Cutting them first with a circular saw made them easier to handle.

Each box, being a hexagon, would need 6 pieces (yea, I know the picture only shows 5 but trust me, you need six).

Next, and this is where math comes in, we had to cut each end of each piece at a 60 degree angle; 60 X 6 = 360 degrees in a circle.

This is much easier to do if you have a table saw.

Now, armed with 6 18 inch pieces of wood cut on an angle at 60 degrees each, we are ready to screw them together and make the planter box.

See how much fun this is!

We laid our box out to make sure everything lined up good.  Perfect!

Then we grabbed two boards and applied some exterior wood glue for extra bondage.  We used Elmer's E7310 Carpenter's Wood Glue Max, Interior/Exterior.

We then used 2 inch screws and screwed the boards together, putting two screws on each side.  We continued this process with the remaining boards.

There's no need to stain or paint the boxes, in fact you don't want to.  Once again, you don't want any harmful chemicals from the paint or stain leaching into your soil.  Because of this the boxes may not last as long, however, one only costs about $15 to make.  Sure beats that $55 price!

See how nicely the three of them fit together.

Now, what to plant.....?