Jake_Darvall wrote:
Hi,

I was wondering if this idea would work.

I've got left over palings from building a fence (untreated) and was
thinking of using them to build a few basic boxes against my shed to
plant things like herbs, tomatoes etc.


Fence paling timber is probably not rated for direct contact with the soil
so it may only last a year or two is such conditions.

What I'm worried about is heat. Because this side of the shed faces
north, and during summer in particular there's a lot of heat
reflected. scorching at times.


I assume you are in the southern hemisphere for a north facing wall to be
hot in summer. Where are you? How hot is hot? If the summer daily
temperature is 42C then adding reflected heat is probably not good, if it is
22C it might be fine.

Would I be wasting my time building boxes ?

I was thinking it may work if I setup a drip feed system of sorts to
keep the soil moist all the time, which would be easy to do here
because I have tank water tap right next door, but still thinking
there'd be too much heat, and the plants will burn (and I'm not into
cactii...)

appreciate any thoughts. I'm quite new to gardening.

thanks kindly
Jake

The boxes you outline look rather small for the root system of tomatoes and
there is nowhere to support them. The size and good drainage would be OK for
many herbs, cutting greens etc. Also small boxes will suffer from the same
problem as small pots, they dry out quickly. A constant drip feed may fix
this but it could be hard to regulate.

David