Last year we planted a herb garden in the front planter of our home. It was great. All summer, mint for my mojitos was just growing right out my front door! After taking over my wifes childhood home, my wife and I decided that upgrading the front planter box would be the first of many projects we'd attack together to make her families home - our new house.

After the wife did some research on what she wanted the new planter to look like, I was off to the local lumber store to get the materials. Unfortunately for me, once I got there it became very clear that this planter was NOT going to be cheap when a friend of mine that works at the lumber store corrected me when he the wood I was attempting to purchase. "Um.... No.... Pine is not the wood you want for this project" he said, and after giving me a quick wood 101 lesson, I knew cedar was the answer. SO, I coughed over the $380.00 for the materials (up from $150.00 for Pine) and I'm ready to build the 6' x 2' planter.

But it's never that easy right? I'm an Engineer and more importantly I'm a Maker so on the way home from the lumber store I started thinking "How can I make this better than just a Cedar planter?" ... 3 minutes latter.... I formulated a concept to automate the planter using an Arduino Micro.

After a week back in the design phase (or as my wife refers to this it, procrastinating), I decided it had to be self-sustainable. We have a family cabin we spend half of the summer at, so there isn't always time in the week to properly take care of a herb garden too. However, if all I have to do is weed it once a week (or when I pick mint for mojitos) this becomes easy and awesome which is my recipe for inventions.

For this project I'm not only building the planter box but also adding a rain-catch watering system operated by the same Arduino that will monitor the planters moisture, pH, temperature, exposure to the sun and will water each plant individually as needed. Did I mention it will also be partially if not all solar powered?

Exhibit A: The old planter
 As you can see this fine planter reached the end of it's life 5 years ago. 

The old Planter

Exhibit B: The pile of cedar purchased for this project

Raw materials for new planter

Yes, I know this isn't all of the materials needed to build a planter but the bottom will need to be custom made for this project so I am building the planters framing first and then dropping in the bottom last.