.This would be my second attempt to garden in the burbs. The first was a series of self watering bucket planters over the summer that I both had mixed results with (burnt to hell and dog chewed) and learned a lot from. Unsatisfied with the outcome I decided, like the hard headed bear I am, that I'd just garden in the winter then. Hell, why not?
Following the necessary procedure, I submitted form HD32, a request for project funds with the boss. She gracefully issued me a grant for backyard beautification and salad creation.
I worked the plans all up in my head, and put it all together out of a mess of 8' dimensional cedar and 4 pressure treated corner posts. Add a little wire to keep the pooches out and TA DA!
Kept it all nice and simple, 8' and 4' not a lot of measuring, just eyeball and cut. I've worked on boats for many years and done construction on them, so I'm pretty good at working where nothing is square, eyeballing and cutting each piece to fit. It's a skill. You may have heard the joke, "Wanted: Painters and Carpenters, sailors need not apply." I have weed cloth down in these pictures, but I later opted to take it out, as you will see.
So It started getting cold. And I needed to keep the garden going. So I got a few sheets of the thickest (4.mil) plastic I could scrounge up in the painting section of Lowes and went to work with the stapler. You can see I cut chunks of pipe insulation and stapled them to the sharp edges, which is working well. I then took a paddle bit and drilled holes at an angle into the corner posts and fitted 2 pieces of 1/2 inch PVC into them, and added two or three zip ties where they cross to keep them together. Draped plastic over, pulled tight and stapled, folded over and stapled again for strength. Leaving the front loose over the gates with a length of pipe taped and rolled up in it and taped again. This way you can just roll up the pipe and swing the gates open and then set the pipe on the gates to hold it up.
On the side is one of the 10 dollar 'dusk to dawn' timers for Christmas lights. I originally bought a 'thermo cube' to control the heat lamp, but then I thought I would like it to come on before it hit 30 degrees. It goes to a three way outlet inside to the lamps.
And here we have the lamps, one heat lamp and one grow light. Why? Because I have a tendency to over engineer the hell out of everything I touch. Yes, I see the ant's eating my beet. My lovely assistant already dusted them in DE.
Spinach in the front, then beets and cabbage in the back there. Also a few squash that popped up you can't see, and the eggplant along the back didn't show up for the party.
Another thing you can see is a 50' soaker hose faked around between the rows and held down with garden staples. That's hooked to an Orbit timer to water for about 10 minutes every third day at noon. Seems to be working well so far.
I hope you enjoyed my little project. Please feel free to ask questions or make suggestions. And as always, thanks for sticking it out through my long ass post.
Your system blows my raised-bed boxes away, I like how you can cover yours.
. Just wait till I start the hydroponics...
