Note: There has been some debate in gardening discussions about the safety of using plastic for edible gardens. For now, here’s our stance: the half lives of any potentially leached phthaltes, as well as the amount that is present in the soil, are the main factors. Our beds are very large and do not have bottoms on them, so the soil microbes in our healthy soil are likely to remove most of these concerns fairly quickly before they would have a chance to reach to the inner beds where our plant roots are, and thus, our exposure to these chemicals is likely higher from other points of contact (like skin products and other foods we already eat every day. PVC is also often directly used for hydroponic growing and many irrigation systems. That said, we recommend you do some research on it if you’re concerned, and you can always line these with a food safe plastic sheeting or galvanized steel sheets.

It’s garden time again, and Melissa asked me to share a post about how we’ve updated our outdoor growing space this year with some upcycled DIY PVC fencing raised beds.

You may have noticed we had updating the garden beds on our home goals list the last two years, but this year, it was a necessity as they were rotting and collapsing even worse than before. (This photo was of one of the better ones.)

If you remember way back to 2013 (FIVE years ago?!), we talked about building our raised garden beds out of the hollow-core doors that were left over when we replaced them throughout the house. You can read that post, HERE. We also lined them with black plastic.

It was a cheap (basically free) way to reuse something we already had and get our garden ready quickly that first year. But, those doors were not made for being outside and as expected, they had deteriorated a little bit over time. Or, a lot. They may have had a longer life if we would have put new paint on the outside to reseal them, but we had a couple of kids and that fell off of our radar. Go figure.

As we saw this happening, we started to brainstorm how we could cover them up or replace them. We were considering getting treated or cedar boards to create a shell around the existing beds. But cedar is expensive, and as we were discussing this with our family one afternoon, we found out Melissa’s parent’s had some scrap material that might work, for free! We’re always up for a thrifty project, especially one that reused otherwise unusable materials, so we figured we’d give it a try.

The material was reclaimed PVC (plastic) fence. You know, that white fence that often used near nicer homes or on ranches in the country? It was perfect for standing up to the weather.

Here’s our step by step process for you to follow along and build them yourself:

After measuring the beds, we found out stacking 4 of these PVC boards would be the exact height we need, they were essentially 2″ x 6″ (nominal – so 1.5″ x 5.5″) boards. We needed a way to fasten the boards together, so I came up with a plan to use the PVC posts that are the remaining fence parts. They were hollow 6″ x 6″ posts. I was able to cut them in half to make two L-shaped corner pieces that were like 6″ angle iron.

Our beds were 30″ x 80″, so we used that as our inside dimensions. This project could also totally be done from scratch though, either by purchasing the (new) fencing materials you’d need, or searching Craigslist or something similar for reclaimed ones like we used. If you weren’t working with existing beds, you could make them any size you prefer (shorter to the ground, shorter in length, etc.) Or, feel free to use the plan we followed if you want to try this for yourself.

First, I marked the sides with a permanent marker so the holes would be in roughly the same spot on both the short side and long side.

I used a 3/4″ paddle bit on the inside of the board. This allowed me to get a socket onto the nut during assembly.

Then, I drilled 1/4″ holes through the outside. This was where the boards would be connected to the L-shaped corner pieces.

I transferred these holes onto the L-shaped corner pieces, then drilled those holes.

Before final assembly, I ran a bead of liquid nail along the line of holes to help keep the boards and L-shaped corner pieces held together.

Finally, I used  1/4″ x 1″ galvanized bolts (rust resistant) through the L-shaped piece and into the sides.

I used a telescoping magnet to start the nuts on the bolts, as the 3/4″ holes were too small for my fingers.

This is usually used to pick up dropped screws or bolts when working on the car, but it worked perfectly here.

Then, I used a deep well socket and my drill to quickly tighten the nuts down.

I used this process to complete the short sides first. Then, you’ll need to attach the L-shaped pieces to both ends of the short sides.

Last, you’ll attach the long sides to complete your beds.

Then it was time to take them out to the garden.

My brother has a vintage hardware business, and happens to have a steel banding tool to wrap, secure, and ship some big items. He brought that up and wrapped each bed with 2 bands. This helped pull the existing beds together since the sides were sagging quite a bit as they rotted, which made it easier to slide the new PVC garden bed shells over the top.

From the top, they look a little janky without a top rail on them. We want to add cedar boards to make a seat ledge and seal this all up.

We then scooped all the dirt to the middle, digging down around the outside edges and removed the old, rotten door in pieces.

We also did this for the two smaller beds, which we originally made from pallet wood (click to read that tutorial, HERE). Those beds held up better than the hollow core doors, but we wanted them all to match.

A little bit of dirt and water does seep out the cracks of these smaller beds because they aren’t lined with anything, but I don’t think that’s a problem. They are tight enough together that it’s not much, and if you wanted to avoid it, you could run silicone caulk along the seams on the inside before filling them with dirt to seal them up.

We are still planning to add the top rail, made from cedar, to each bed which will give us a place to sit and lean, something we’ve always wanted to do but never added to the old beds. But…we’ll see. For now they are working really well as they are!

All in all, this was a pretty easy project, and the only expense we had was the hardware. Plus, we got to reuse something that was otherwise trash just taking up space. But even if you were going to buy the fence pieces new, this would still be very economical. Or, try calling local fencing companies to see if they have old pieces you could buy? And, I think the white looks great contrasting with the green of the grass and the plants growing out of them. Much better than the muddy green color we had painted the doors (it was mistinted paint we got for cheap). You can see what it looked like before, here.

I’d love to know if you try this, or what you think of our repurposed beds, round two. I wish we had thought to use this the first time as I’m expecting them to hold up much better than the wood. What other creative things have you used for raised container gardening?