More Container Gardening

Now that I'm getting over my illness, I'm eager to garden. Before getting sick I had gotten Matt's place tilled up and ready for growing. Matt planted beans, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins. Now it's my turn on my own land.

The first thing I opted to do was create some grow boxes. I have some specific crops in mind to grow in them. Grow boxes......aka container gardening...... work well from growing something atop lava rock.

Taro starts planted in the first box. 

I make my boxes out of pallets. I line them with old plastic bags then fill them with compost. The bags help extend the life of the pallet wood, but more importantly they help retain moisture in the box. Containers tend to dry out quickly in the tropical wind and sun, and the plastic liner helps prevent that. As for the compost fill, I happen to make that myself. I not blessed to have several cubic yards of garden soil just laying around, so I resort to homemade compost. In making my current new boxes, I'll be emptying all my 12 compost bins. Looks like I'll be busy refilling them after this project is built! 

Boxes ready for painting, lining, and filling. 

These boxes go together quickly. I cut down the pallets in half. Nail 4 together to make a box. If the spacing between the wood slats is greater than 1 inch, then I cover it up with a piece of pallet wood. If an inch or less, I don't bother. Using a staple gun, I tack the black garbage bags to the inside of the box, generously overlapping the bags. Before adding the compost I put a couple layers of cardboard in the bottom to help prevent the tropical grasses from growing right up through the deep compost. Next, in goes the compost. The coarsest stuff goes in the bottom, the finer stuff on top. Now it's ready to plant. Oh yes, I'll be painting the outside of the boxes in order to make them visually more pleasing.