Building a Vertical Planter Box for our balcony

As promised in my last post, lets talk about how we went about building a vertical planter box for our balcony herb garden.

Let me start by saying there are sooo many ways to build a vertical planter box. Some designs may be easier to achieve than the design we choose. But, we wanted to choose a design that would involve hands on work simply because we love DIYs. Be sure to choose a design that will complement your specific space and take all the necessary measurements before you start.

But, if you just want to do what we did, here’s a rundown of how we built a vertical planter box to fit our balcony.

Data Gathering

As network engineers, the very first thing we do before starting a project or even a basic troubleshooting session is data gathering. Therefore, it was only natural for us to approach this DIY the very same way. Talk about life lessons (applied learning).

We looked through a catalog of pictures on PINTEREST and narrowed the list down to our top three (3) choices. From there we made a choice based on effort to construct and availability of the material required to get the job done. Once we agreed that the design would be a vertical planter with 3 usable planting sections, then it was time to haul.

Once we identified the area of the balcony where we wanted to put the planter, we measured the space. From the measurements we estimate the box could be 42″ x 18″ and 48″ tall.

HARDWARE STORE HAUL!!! I was not invited to the hardware store and maybe that was a good thing. But now, we will never know.

What you will need to build the vertical planter box

• 2 pallets (one as the foundation and the other will be dismantled and used to build the planter.)
• 8ft length of a 6’ x 1’ treated wood (This is optional, but we had some left over from another project.
• Wood Nails 1”
• 24 wood screws (1 ½”)
• 36 wood screws (2”)
• 1 quart white oil paint

For tools, you will need a marker, a paint brush, a tape measure, a hammer, a hand saw, a crowbar and a screw driving drill (or a regular screwdriver).

Construction Time – Building the planter box

The pallets we got were the perfect size to fit into our balcony space measuring 4ft tall and 3ft 4 inches wide. I call that lucky.

We started by dismantling one of the pallets with the crowbar and the hammer. All the wood on the front can be re-used if carefully removed.

Next, we measured and cut the salvaged wood to sizes we would need to fill all the gaps of the other pallet. The yellow arrows show where we placed wood to close in the bottom of the top and middle planter sections. We also laid two 2 planks across the front to completely close the very large gaps. The sides were also filled with square wood blocks from the dismantled pallet.

We used a larger outdoor space to complete this part since we needed to move around a bit. Once we had all the pieces cut exactly how we needed, we moved everything to our balcony to fit and measure again before we nailed and screwed it together. For the lowest planter section we use the 6×1 wood plank cut down to two sizes. Four 16 inch lengths for side and two 42inch lengths for the front of the section. We used the last of the wood from the pallet to fill in the bottom of the lower section.

Finishing Strong

Then the fun part. Painting. We just got to painting all the areas that were visible to make it look a little less rustic. It may be a little rough but we call that character, and if you like you could always sand it to get a smoother finish.

The last step was lining the insides of all the boxes with garden weed liner. This was to ensure that water could flow out easily but all the dirt would stay in.

Now that the vertical planter box was ready, we filled it with soil and started the garden journey.

I hope you enjoyed reading about how we went about building a vertical planter box for our balcony.

Don’t forget to read my post on starting a herb garden on my balcony. Also like share and subscribe to follow my gardening journey.

Bye for now. Happy gardening!!