How To Build A Raised Vegetable Garden Box

I have many years of experience growing many different crops in vertical gardens, and I love sharing my expertise and passion with others.

Vertical gardening allows you to grow a vast array of plants in small spaces while still enjoying solid yields and many tasty fruits.

Ruth Hartnup, CC-BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

DIY Vertical Vegetable Garden

If you don't have a lot of space for a vegetable garden, vertical gardening may be the perfect solution for you. You may not realize it, but you can grow and harvest great crops of vegetables in 3 to 5-gallon containers. You can even grow great little herb gardens indoors in small containers on window sills. Pole beans and cucumbers are perfect plants for vertical gardening. Plum, roma, and cherry tomatoes can be grown in hanging baskets. I've also grown pumpkins, yardlong beans, potatoes, yellow crookneck squash, and zucchini in my vertical gardens.

In this guide, I'll show you how to put together some vertical gardens of your own and share some tips for how best to maintain them.

Here's an easy step-by-step guide to help you set up your first vertical garden. I tried this out myself and it worked wonderfully.

Supplies and Instructions for Building a DIY Vertical Garden

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to build a vertical garden (as pictured above):

What You'll Need:

Wooden pallet
Sandpaper
Staple gun and staples
Hammer and nails
Landscaping paper
Planting soil
1/4-thick medium-density fibreboard (MDF)
Plants

Instructions:

Sand down any rough patches—along with all the corners—on the pallet.
If the pallet has no backing, nail the MDF to the back using about 12 nails. (This is to prevent the soil from spilling out of the back.)
Double up your landscaping paper and staple it along the sides, bottom, and back of the pallet.
Lay your pallet down flat and fill it with potting soil. Press the soil down firmly, but leave enough room for planting.
Begin planting, starting with the bottom of the pallet. As you work your way up, make sure each of the plants are packed in tight before moving on to the next layer.
Once all the plants are secured, water them thoroughly.
Leave your pallet horizontal for two weeks to allow the plants to take root.
Stand the pallet upright and enjoy!

How to Support Your Vertical Garden

In the photo below, you can see exactly how a vertical garden needs to be built. For one, there needs to be plenty of support for the weight of the plants you're growing. Remember that the vegetables that you're growing vertically can easily be pulled down by strong gusts. So the better support you can have for your vegetables being grown vertically, the better off you will be.

Some people stick their supports in the soil, but I strongly suggest attaching your supports to the containers by screws or nails. That way, you won't have to worry about your vegetables falling down or getting blown over by strong winds or thunderstorms.

You also need to set up the bed for your plants and put the growing supports in place before you ever plant your vegetables in the beds.

Build a Simple Frame

If you need an idea for a place to start, you can just build a sturdy frame like in the photo below (or just a standard cube-like structure). If you build it in a 12' x 12' square, you'll be able to grow all the cucumbers you—and several families—will be able to use. Once you have the frame built, be sure to create a door and cover the sides and top with hog wire.

Be sure that you use treated lumber for your grow frames and for your containers. I put my growing containers around the bottom of the frames, and I put thick black plastic down in the floor of the enclosure to block out grass and weeds. I often set an outdoor chair inside the enclosure and just go out there and sit for a while in the evenings. When the enclosure gets covered with cucumbers, it looks like a cucumber house.

Note: If you're using treated wood boxes for your containers, they should be set on 4" x 4" timbers, or even on railroad ties, so that they will be up off the ground.

How to Encourage Vertical Growth

In many cases, you can just plant something as you normally would and then move the vines to encourage them to grow up and over your vertical supports. I often use cotton gardening twine to tie mature plants to their supports, encouraging them to grow vertically.

Hog Wire Works Great for Added Support

You can also use what is known as hog wire to build great support walls to grow cucumbers on. If you grow your cucumbers this way, you'll be able to walk along the wall of hog wire that they're growing on and pick off the fruits.

To do this, you can put up 4" x 4" wooden posts about 2 feet in the ground with 6 feet sticking up above the ground and fasten hog wire across the poles like a fence. Then plant your cucumber plants along the bottom, about a foot apart. As the cucumber plants grow, train them up onto the hog wire. You can weave the growing plants into the hog wire. The cucumber plants will keep growing, and you'll be rewarded in time with lots of delicious cucumbers along your vertical wall.

You can grow great squash up on an A-frame support like in this photo. Be sure to build a secure, heavy-duty frame for squash plants, though.

Author

Prepare Your Containers and Soil for Vertical Gardening

If you're doing your vegetable gardening in containers, it's important that the containers be prepared correctly with proper drainage and a good mixture of topsoil and fertilizer.

Make Sure Your Containers Drain Well

It's a good idea to bore plenty of drainage holes into your containers and line the bottoms with screen wire (to keep those holes open). I also usually put 4–6 inches of crushed gravel and small stones in the bottoms of my containers—about 1 inch for every 5 inches of soil. I usually purchase the larger crushed gravel, because it allows for more drainage and I like to pack my gravel in.

Once you've packed the gravel in, you can fill the containers to the top with good-quality topsoil and a compost/manure mixture as outlined below.

Use Only Well-Rotted Manure or Compost

Be sure that any manure or compost that you use is very well rotted, or you'll burn your vegetable plants up. Mix 80 percent topsoil and 20 percent well-rotted manure or well-rotted compost for best results. I like to mix my soil in a wheelbarrow when I'm filling up new containers.

How to Prepare Your Soil

Before I plant my vegetables, I add a pound of 5-10-5 fertilizer to the soil every 20 feet along the row of plants. This is in addition to the 20 percent of well-rotted manure or compost.

If you do it this way, you'll find that your plants will start off very strong and grow up and over the vertical supports quickly. When my plants first start to grow vegetables, I side-dress them with another pound of 5-10-5 fertilizer for every 20 feet of plants.

Note: About every three years, I take all the soil out of my containers (down to the gravel) and mix it with more well-rotted manure or well-rotted compost. By "doing the soil over," as I call it, I keep my vegetables growing well. This process is greatly aided by my compost bin, which I highly recommend putting together in your home if you don't already have one.

You can put up a section of fence like this photo and plant your cucumbers along it. They will grow up the fence and be easy to pick.

When Should You Water Your Plants?

Be sure to water your vegetables only when the sun is not shining on them. You really need to water before sunrise or after sunset. I have my sprinklers on timers. They come on at about 10 pm and go off at 10:30 pm. I try to ensure that any soil where I have vegetables planted gets at least one inch of water a week. If it rains this much, then I don't have to water.

Tips on Growing Various Fruits and Vegetables

There are so many different, wonderful foods that you can grow in your vertical garden. Here are just a few that I've had some success with:

Cucumbers

Cucumber vines growing up in the air on strong supports will produce huge amounts of scrumptious fruits. If you pick them off with regularity, you'll be rewarded with a bounty of cucumbers to produce tasty pickles with. I like to pick them when they are a little bigger than a man's thumb and make delicious dill pickles with them.

Potatoes

In the early spring or late fall, before it's time to plant other vegetables, you can plant various varieties of potatoes in your containers and grow bumper crops. They will grow very fast in the prepared loose soil.

Tomatoes

All types of tomatoes are wonderful for vertical gardening. In the last few years, I've started to grow mostly heirloom tomatoes, including many varieties of cherry and pear tomatoes. While there are many delicious modern tomatoes, nothing beats the flavor of heirlooms. I like to search for seed companies and order their catalogs in the spring. Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats the flavor of heirloom tomatoes that you grow yourself.

Note: When I grow my tomatoes, I also plant marigolds in hanging baskets overhead in my growing enclosures, because tomato worms cannot stand marigolds. The mere presence of marigolds should be enough to keep tomato worms, and various other garden pests, far away from your precious fruits.

Pumpkins

I've even had success vertically growing big pumpkins. I did, however, have to use 2" x 4"s to support them. I'll also often add mesh nets under the bigger pumpkins when they get growing to provide them with additional support. I've grown some this way that have weighed over 100 pounds hanging 8–10 feet in the air. I promise you it's quite a sight to see.

Pole Beans

In the video below, you'll see how to grow pole beans on a teepee made out of bamboo poles. This is a great way to grow pole beans, especially if you remember to anchor your teepees well with tent stakes and rope so that they won't blow over in a strong wind or thunderstorm.

Be sure to leave enough room to walk in under your teepee and pick pole beans from the inside (as well as from the outside). And don't forget to do your own research and find various varieties to grow, such as yardlong or purple pole beans. Children especially love to see the yardlong pole beans growing, and the beans are so very tasty.

Do Your Own Research

Vertical gardening is vastly superior to row crops in some ways. Pole beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers all grow much better in vertical gardens than they do when planted with the conventional method. Every year, I grow huge amounts of cucumbers, pole beans, and squash using various forms of vertical gardening, and so can you.

Do your own research, and plant things that you and your family like to eat. I keep a journal every year about my gardens so I can refer back to it in the years to come.

Purple pole beans are a great choice for a beginner vertical garden.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author's knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

Aditya on November 11, 2018:

Great information. A detail explained Vertical Vegetable Garden.

Inga lasko on April 01, 2018:

I'm going to try and grow vertical squash this summer.

Susana Vargas on March 27, 2018:

Am thankful for the infos regarding vertical vegetable gardening, I have yet to start. What I have now planted in containers. Tnx again, I'll post as soon as I have started my vertical vegetable garden.

Hilda Morrison on January 23, 2018:

I used a big planter. Made about holes around the top edge. Add long string to each hole. Get a round circle of metal or wood (the middle out of it like the metal edging of a big coffee can) & attach the loose edge of the string then gather all edges together at the very top & connect to a ceiling or hanger for plant basket. Great for on a balcony. Plant your seeds or plants at each string & watch them grow. Remember to water them. Ive done it tomatoes & beans. Enjoy!

Wendy on June 23, 2017:

Great tips

Looking forward to trying some out

Genkiss on January 17, 2016:

I have a couple of raised beds ,and have been growing vegetables for years. When I saw your vertical garden I knew I had to try it. I'm very excited to get started and see the results.

SLR on March 10, 2015:

Question, can you grow tomatoes, cukes, and zukes, side by side in a vertical garden? Or do they need to be separated?

Amie Says on February 02, 2015:

Very informative with a lot of information. Good job!

Brandon Hart from The Game on February 02, 2015:

My friend used a setup similar to the fencing used in the cucumber garden example, but he used it for tomatoes instead. By the end of the season, he had collected nearly 3 5-gallon buckets full of different types of tomatoes.

Mypath from California, USA on February 02, 2015:

Awesome. I love gardening. I sure will use few of above tips for my small garden. Thanks for sharing wonderful hub.

Himadri from New York, New York on February 02, 2015:

wow, nice and very informative.

James Packard from Columbia, Missouri on February 02, 2015:

Nice visuals! What a great idea for people who only have access to limited space (big cities). My folks are big gardeners, I'll have to pass it along.

Teddy Kimathi from Nairobi on January 27, 2015:

Cool stuff! It seems agricultural techniques keep on evolving each day!

Thomas Byers (author) from East Coast , United States on April 23, 2014:

Thanks very much for your comment. I hope you find it helpful.

Esther Shamsunder from Bangalore,India on April 23, 2014:

You have fueled my interest in vertical gardening. Just been looking up DIY ideas for home gardening. Came across your neatly organized hub. Thanks!

Thomas Byers (author) from East Coast , United States on April 23, 2014:

Yes I have salad greens and tomatoes growing in hydroponic beds that are flushed many times a day with water from my tilipia tanks. The tomatoes are doing very well this way. Sorry I just saw the comment.

Marisa Hammond Olivares from Texas on March 23, 2014:

I was looking for gardening ideas and I came across your hub on Pinterest. Nice job and thanks for the vertical planting tips.

Twila Nelson from Carmichael, California on August 02, 2012:

Thank you for a wonderful Hub and fantastic tips for those of us who do have a limited amount of space and love fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs. I especially thank you for the marigold tip, I am going to see if it will work for my granddaughter's pumpkins and watermelon.

europewalker on July 28, 2012:

Informative and interesting hub. With food prices going up, I really need to start my own garden!

Cynthia Calhoun from Western NC on July 26, 2012:

I love this! You've given me some ideas to tinker with. Ironically, we have five acres, but most of it, except the 1/4 acre where our house is, is mountainous and steep. We have about 1/8 acre that we're farming, but desperately want to expand and this gives me some great ideas. Thanks so much!

Dr Kulsum Mehmood from Nagpur, India on July 24, 2012:

Great info and illustrations in this hub. Voted up. And tweeted on twitter.

Annabelle Tyler on July 24, 2012:

Great article!!

Thomas Byers (author) from East Coast , United States on July 24, 2012:

It works perfect for people with small spaces.

Thomas Byers (author) from East Coast , United States on July 24, 2012:

Yes I do with my tipilia pools and the water circulates out of them into my hydroponic beds and then back into the fish ponds. Right now I'm growing about 3000 pounds of fish a year.

2uesday on July 24, 2012:

This is a good idea for anyone wanting to grow their own food in a small area.

Deb Hirt from Stillwater, OK on July 24, 2012:

This was very well done. Have you done any hydroponic gardening?