Container Gardening and New Garden Building Plans

My first time container gardening! With our plans now to do something about the barn my gardening plans also had to change. Our vegetable garden is all of ten feet from the front of the barn so the likely hood of it coming out of this unscathed are very low and trying to protect it would just be inconvenient and silly. But this actually works for us as I had planned to tear out the garden and rebuild it at some point anyway. Well, no time like the present to tear it out I guess!

I built our garden in 2019 out of barn wood and whatever I had on hand. It would have probably lasted another few years (with upkeep) but, not at all surprisingly, wood is a pretty terrible choice when it comes to gardening.

Wood rots.

Gardens are generally wet.

Its a just a terrible combination.

Container Gardening

Our new garden will be built out of some kind of block. We’re thinking about using the same kind of pavers that we used around our new fire pit on the exterior walls. (Cause it looks nice.)

But I think its just an adorable idea with plain concrete block to take advantage of the holes in the centers for plants so we may use regular block for the interior walls, and that would save us some money too.

Around the whole garden we’ll be using 6×8 chain link fencing that includes a center gate.

The fencing is going to be interesting to work with as it is not going to perfectly match up to the dimensions of the garden so we’ll either be bending it or cutting it etc. But I think the convenience of it will be totally worth it.

I know it won’t be as “pretty” as the inspiration garden but I don’t care – I want it to last.

I learned the hard way with my previous garden that, especially because it was so tall, it required A LOT of dirt. This time I’m going to look into filling the bottom with several inches of pea gravel or rock first and I’m also not going to make it nearly as tall.

The garden now is so tall I’ve practically had to climb into it to reach the corners!

So I’m going to opt for only about two and a half feet tall this time around.

(I can always add another level of block later if I want it taller.)

I’m also going to do something across the top so I can hang a center sprinkler and I think it would be so cute to hang solar lights there too.

We’ll be building it in the same place, in front of the barn, on the slab.

Meanwhile I was in a bit of a pickle because of course I still wanted to garden. (I skipped it one year due to just being too busy and regretted it all summer.)

So I finally have a use for the dozens of big plastic bins we have leftover from our horse’s food!

(Here’s the Amazon equivalent to the tubs I’m using.)

Here’s our list:

Cucumbers, Peas, Green Beans, Beats, Carrots, Zucchini, Herbs, Lettuce, Spinach, Bell Peppers and Tomatoes.

The herb container will hold Sage, Thyme, Oregeno and Basil.

I grabbed 13 bins and stacked them so I could drill out the drainage holes for a few of them at a time. I used a 1/2″ spade bit and 1/4″ bit and drilled about a dozen holes in each for drainage and for the dowels.

I picked up twenty, 4 foot tall, 1/4″ wood dowels from our local fleet farm for our climbers and our tomatoes.

Using a hammer I pounded the dowels down through the 1/4″ holes and a few inches into the ground. This is going to be great for support as well as helping keep the tomato cages upright and if our climbers get so tall that they need more I can always add hog fencing around the dowels.

From there I lined all of the bins with weed fabric and then I filled them up with dirt from the old garden.

I had everything I needed to get this done besides the seeds and dowels but I would have purchased the seeds anyway.

So, this whole thing only cost us the dowels (less than $20) which is pretty darned cool as this is almost certainly a one time thing to make my little gardener’s heart happy this year!

I’ve always had trouble keeping everybody in their own lane and healthy so I’m excited to see how this goes in comparison.

Its also going to cut me back a bit which is ok by me to have a little less on my plate this summer.

I will admit my crazy pile of plastic green bins does look kind of insane by the garage currently lol