Making this salad table was kind of a spur of the moment thing. I was flipping through Martha Stewart’s web site, when they happened to have set-up a section of their web site just for spring gardening/planting. Well one of the things that they were showing on her site was a salad table. Personally I’d never heard of nor seen a salad table before, so it kind of piqued my interest.

I basically had all the materials laying around the house, it was just a matter of building it. The only thing that I needed to buy for the project was a piece of window screen material (aluminum or fiberglass), which was under $7.00 at Menards. So even if I made this and I didn’t like it, I really didn’t have a lot of capital outlaid for the table.

Honestly, there really isn’t too much to make one of these salad table, though I did change the design slightly in two ways:

1. Instead of wooden legs made out of 2 x 4s, I just used a set of plastic saw horses that I had sitting in the basement.

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2. Since I didn’t need to make a set of wooden legs I only needed three 2 x 4 x 8′ studs for all the salad table pieces, instead of the what the directions listed of two 2 x 4 x 10’ long and two 2 x 4 x 12’ long.

Since I was basically redesigning the table to better utilize eight foot studs, I went with four sections on the table instead of three. If I would have followed the original design with three sections, I would have ended up with a 36″ piece of scrap from one of the eight foot studs, verse a 6″ scrap with four sections. Plus with four section it will give me more space for “side projects.”

With one of those side projects being a holding area for seedlings that I transplanted into white plastic cups. Unfortunately this idea hasn’t worked out as planned (see the hailstorm posts #1 and #2). But minus the hailstorm I can see the benefits of having this salad table sitting outside. I guess the true test will come this week when I actually fill up a couple of sections with potting mix and use it for its intended purpose, growing fresh salad greens.

Outside Links:
Salad table on Martha Stewart’s website
University of Maryland Salad Table Main Site
University of Maryland Salad Table Construction PDF