"Spring is one of our favorite times of the year and also one of our busiest—it’s planting season! These tips and DIY projects are perfect for prepping your garden."
Spring is one of our favorite times of the year. It’s also one of our busiest because of spring cleaning and…planting season! After making the most of our indoor spaces throughout the winter, we’re ready to get outside, dust off our gardening tools, start working our soil, and prepare our garden to bring us a bounty of fruit, vegetables, and flowers throughout the spring, summer, and fall. You too? Then these helpful gardening guides and DIY projects to prep your garden are for you. Happy planting!
Growing Vegetables in the Pacific Northwest
Thanks to the fairly mild winters and pretty short summers we have in the Pacific Northwest, a lot of the vegetables that would die in other climates’ extreme heat or extreme cold thrive here. We partnered with one of our favorite local nurseries, Swansons Nursery, to create this helpful PNW planting guide and infographic covering when to plant veggies in the spring and throughout the year.
How To Build a Cold Frame Tent
The promise of warmer weather is getting closer, but we all know that spring weather (especially in the Pacific Northwest) can still be chilly or unpredictable. This cold frame tent can fit your planter bed to help protect your spring starts from too much rain, frost, snow, hail, wind—or whatever spring throws our way.
How To Build a Strawberry Planter
This tiered wooden strawberry planter is a great way to start a small crop of berries without taking up too much space. We love how the strawberry plants start to cascade down as they grow!
How To Build a DIY Garden Storage Shed
Building a garden takes a lot of work—and a lot of tools. This DIY garden storage shed is designed to be compact but still highly versatile and functional. It also has a fold-away table and half-shelf, so you can store your tools in the same place as you work.
How To Build a Potting Bench
This potting bench is a perfect project if you love gardening but still need a dedicated workstation. It keeps everything tidy and fits just as well in a backyard as a garage (or even an apartment balcony). It’s beautiful, too!
Your Guide To Pruning
Pruning can be daunting if you’ve never done it before. Where do you cut? What should you cut? What happens if you do it wrong? The key to a good prune lies in understanding the basic methodology. These tips from the pruning masters at Swansons Nursery cover everything you need to know to get started.
How To Build an Elevated Planter Box
Is this the year you start to grow your own herbs? If so, you’ll love this simple elevated planter box. Elevated planters work well for smaller plants or as a place to start plants and seedlings before transferring them to a larger space. They also help keep what you're growing away from ground-level pests.
How To Build a Self-watering Raised Bed
This is one of our more involved DIY projects—there are two parts—but it’s worth it if you’re serious about gardening! With a self-watering raised planter, you don’t need to worry about keeping your plants watered. You can even go away for the weekend, and they’ll be fine!
See Part I of the project plan See Part II of the project plan
These are some of our favorite gardening posts but there’s still even more to discover on Dunn DIY!