Upcycling a fruit crate

[Darren]

Recently I bought four fruit crates from a local orchard that I plan to turn into raised veggie gardens. The only thing is that not only do they have that great rustic look that I wanted but they are quite rustic as well. Very rustic. So much so that some of the boards are rotten and others are split.

Before I fill these things with scoria and soil I need to strengthen them. I don't want to use treated pine as I'll be planting edibles. Any ideas on the best way to re-inforce them so they don't collapse when filled?

[ProjectPete]

They look awesome!

Is it the corners/uprights with the main issue? If so, and if you like the rusted metal look, I'd whack some right angle steel up the corners to hold the wood in place. Either pick up some already rusted steel or rust some up yourself with some bleach and maybe finish off with a blowtorch.

[Darren]

Thanks, @ProjectPete that's a great idea. It's a combination of the corners and some of the boards along the bottom of the crates that are a bit worse for wear. When I find some spare time and get some more work done I'll post a project update.

[Jason]

The crate looks fantastic @Darren. Looking forward to seeing what you can do with them.

Jason

[aly]

Looks great Darren! We sold many of our old fruit bins off our orchard for the purpose of raised vegie gardens - they're really quite popular these days!

[Darren]

So a few weeks ago I posted a picture of some pretty beat up fruit crates that I wanted to turn into raised garden beds. After a lot of re-inforcing we finally finished the crates and planted them over the weekend. Fingers crossed everything grows!

[aly]

They look fantastic @Darren!

[Jackson]

They look great, @Darren. What'd you end up using for the reinforcing?

[Darren]

Thanks @Jackson. I ended up using a few things - batten screws on each of the palings, I replaced rotten palings with some spare palings from another crate so the timber would match and finally a length of ceder fence post that I cut into sections and screwed to the underside of the crates to help bear the weight. So far so good - none of them have collapsed!

[RosieW]

I have crate envy! They're beautiful.