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A tomato plant needs two things a pot doesn't give it: root space and something to climb. This planter builds both as one piece — a fence-picket box with 40" 1x2 uprights at the corners, laddered with horizontal rungs, so the cage can't blow over or heel sideways under a loaded August plant the way a wire cone stuck in dirt does. The cage is anchored to the box; the box is ballasted by the soil. Neither goes anywhere.
The materials list is deliberately minimal — two 6-foot cedar pickets and three 8-foot 1x2 furring strips — and the cut list includes exact cutting diagrams for getting every piece out of those five boards with almost nothing left over. Follow the board-by-board layout; freelancing the cuts is how you end up one 15-1/2" rung short.
Cedar for the box because it's touching wet soil all season, and exterior star-drive screws because furring strips will eat the heads off cheap phillips screws. Line the box with a pot or landscape fabric — cedar tolerates soil contact, but drainage is what actually decides whether the box lasts five years or fifteen.
| Item | Qty |
|---|---|
| Cedar fence picket, 5-1/2" x 72"All eight box sides come from these two pickets — see the cutting layout in the cut list. | 2 each |
| 1x2 furring strip, 8 ftCage uprights and rungs. | 3 each |
| Exterior screws, #8 x 1-5/8", self-tapping, star driveOne 50-pack does one planter. | 50 each |
| Landscape fabric or plastic liner potLine the box or drop a pot in — bare soil against the pickets shortens their life. | 1 each |
Overall cost: $. Lumber prices vary by region, species, and season, so we give a band rather than a figure we would only be pretending to know.
| Part | Qty | T × W × L |
|---|---|---|
| Box sides, longCedar fence picketCut each picket: 18 | 18 | 17 | 17. Pickets are nominally 5/8" thick. | 4 | 5/8" × 5 1/2" × 18" |
| Box sides, shortCedar fence picket | 4 | 5/8" × 5 1/2" × 17" |
| Cage uprights1x2 furringTwo 8-ft 1x2s each yield: 40 | 40 | 15-1/2. | 4 | 3/4" × 1 1/2" × 40" |
| Cage rungs1x2 furringThe third 1x2 yields six; the other two come from the upright boards' offcuts. | 8 | 3/4" × 1 1/2" × 15 1/2" |
Buy 6 boards at 8 ft.
4 boards
2 boards
Assumes 8 ft stock, a 1/8" saw kerf, and buying each part at its own width. Change the board size or kerf on the full board plan →
Attach two 17" pickets across two 40" uprights, two screws per joint — one picket at the bottom of the uprights, one above it. Build two identical panels.
Check each panel is square before the second screws go in: the picket-to-picket distance at the top of the uprights should also be 17", and the bottom edges should line up. These two panels set the geometry of everything after.
Stand the two panels up and screw the 18" pickets across the outside, into the uprights, forming the box. The longer pickets overlap the ends of the shorter ones — that overlap is what hides the end grain on two faces.
Screw the first set of 15-1/2" rungs between the uprights on the open sides, fastening into the insides of the uprights. These tie the four corners into a cage instead of four sticks.
Add the remaining rungs, spacing them so a hand with a tomato in it fits between levels — the cage is for the plant, but you're the one reaching through it all summer.
Drop a plastic pot inside or staple landscape fabric to line the box, add soil and a seedling, and park it where the plant gets sun. The cage will disappear under foliage by July, which is the whole idea.
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