Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Raised Bed Gardens

For quite some time now, I've wanted to have raised bed gardens. Two years ago, two friends of mine said they would help me build these, so I purchased a bunch of bags of top soil and 2 big bales of Pete moss. These are all still in the plastic they came in, still sitting in my shed. Neither of the two that said they would help actually did.

This year, I came up with a plan. I decided that bath tubs would make good raised bed gardens. I used to have a couple old bath tubs that I had planned to do something with, probably make fish ponds out of them, and gave them away a couple years ago to someone who needed them for horse troughs. Now I wish I had them back.

A friend of mine's parents are redoing their bathroom, so I got lucky and was able to get their old bath tub... and toilet & sink. All of these blue bathroom fixtures will hold dirt and plants. They will work well for my needs. I'm thinking strawberries or mint in the toilet tank and bowl, maybe even in the sink. I plan to have the sink sitting on a bucket of water so the water will wick up into the soil and self water as needed. I'll put rocks in the bottom of the tub then compost and soil mixture.

So far I am not sure just what I will plant as there are lots of things I would like. Some thoughts are: cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, spinach, swiss chard. I also want as I mentioned before, strawberries and mint. I want lots and lots of mint, especially chocolate mint. I really enjoy a good cup of chocolate mint tea. Since I am working at eating a large percentage of my diet raw, I want to grow lots of veg and fruit that I can do this with. Maybe some nut trees would be a good thing too. Hmmm.

I think I could use a few more raised beds... a few more old tubs.

1 comment:

Finding Pam said...

That is a novel idea for a raised bed. I look forward to seeing the pictures.

I am sorry to hear about your dog. My deepest sympathies.