Development of vegetable garden planter using commercially available plywood and comparison of performance with conventional cedar wood planters

Abstract

Vegetable gardening, which can be enjoyed all the way through to harvesting, has become increasingly popular in urban areas in recent years. However, in urban areas where there is no farmland nearby, it is necessary to use planters of a certain size and depth to secure the soil necessary for vegetable cultivation. For this reason, we have designed and produced original planters made of cedar wood and have used them for vegetable cultivation. However, this planter design had several drawbacks, including the need to communicate the specifications to a lumber store and have the parts made each time they were produced, the complicated structure requiring many screws for assembly, and the tendency for the solid cedar wood to decay and deteriorate due to soil moisture in the planter. In order to solve these problems, a new prototype planter using plywood with a simple structure was developed, and its ease of assembly and durability against soil moisture were verified. As a result, we confirmed that the planter greatly reduces assembly labor, and its durability against moisture is the same as that of conventional planters.