Raised Container Gardening.... A new learning experience!

It took a while to study the sunniest spot in the yard.  For a whole day, I took a picture once an hour and then emailed it to myself so I could see an hour by hour view.

This garden was actually planted on April 1.  I'm really excited about the idea of a container garden and now that I've got it going I'm going to post backwards a little on the blog.  Now that I'm having trouble with my knees, having a container garden that sits high enough so that I can work with it standing up, will be a sweet gift.  It also prevents me from getting in over my head which I am always apt to do. Like walking into the cafeteria line when your starving and buy more food than you can eat.  I ALWAYS try to plant more garden than I can handle.

 Charles was a huge help.  I know I could have done it alone but what he did in an hour would have taken me days to do.  I thank him profusely and forgive him for saying that we will be eating the most expensive and hard won vegetables in town.. lol. 

We and I use the term loosely since I was only creating the mix and Charles was doing the heavy lifting began by putting together the garden rack.  My dream is to have four 6 'x 2' oval tubs but I couldn't really afford that this time around so Charles found these nifty smaller 17 gallon tubs at Home Depot * and actually it will probably be best because this is a learning experience for me and better to use this model while I learn.

To get the tubs up higher, so they are more accessible to me, Charles put together the "rack" for the tubs using 4 cinder blocks and two 6 ft landscaping timbers.  I think the original trip to home depot for the tubs, cinder blocks, timbers, soil, gravel and ground cloth was about $126.  To purchase only one of the bigger tubs is over $200.

1. After putting together the rack, he drilled holes in the bottom of all the tubs and set them on the rack.
2. Poured a cheap pea gravel in the very bottom
3. Covered that with black landscaping cloth
4. Poured in the Natures Care, Organic Raised Bed Soil and mixed and spread it out.

Don't forget the beer and the off or you will lose your helper!  We discussed painting the cinder blocks but never got around to it.  There are a lot of cool ideas about painting them so maybe later I'll try that.  I let the tubs sit that evening and started planting the next day.  It was a really fun morning.

* Link to the tubs  https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2353756261591078127#allposts