I've been thinking about this Garden for at least two years now after we bought our first house. But I've not done a damn thing about it. Research, thinking but nothing concrete.
Yesterday Gary and I went to Lowes and found that they didn't have much to help us with but their Garden person sent us to San Juan Capistrano. I opted to go to Green Thumb International in Lake Forest (my local store, you will find yours pretty easily).
They were helpful, explaining why cedar is the wood of choice for container gardens, it repels bugs. Well that's good. They had some already made but not the 4x4 that I was looking to use (and overpriced as far as I was concerned). They were kind enough to recommend Ganahl Lumber so we can build our own container, another local store that's not a huge chain.
My dear husband has volunteered to assemble said container and I'm attempting to figure out the best way to then fill the damn thing.
I'm going to use gravel over the concrete where we will be setting our container (I've been told why bother, break up the concrete, but that's not an option for me, I want to control the soil and this is one way of doing it, containers. The place in our backyard that gets the best light happens to be where all the concrete is. So that's the biggest issue and we just have no desire to chop down our trees that provide great shade in the hot summers and helps cool our house down). The gravel will allow for drainage and on top of that I will use some sort of topsoil. I haven't decided what kind yet. Thankfully both gravel and soil is relatively inexpensive and easy to find.
So my first real purchase happened yesterday at Target. I came across a container that seemed perfect to start off our composting. From my online research many of the official containers are overpriced, go figure.
This one cost me $7.99 and has a top that closes securely. It was easy to poke some holes in for aerating and it's the perfect size. The next step is to find a list of things we can compost to post in the kitchen for easy reference (this is the intermediate step before going to an actual compost pile that I will figure out how to hold in the back yard, pallets have been a suggestion so far, cheap and easy).
Everyone over at La Vida Locavore has been a great help and I recommend checking out this amazing blog. Jill Richardson recommended an a great resource for my composting, You Grow Girl.
Next weekend? We will buy the lumber to build the box and try to figure out what kind of fruit trees we can plant in our backyard. Because we don't have a ton of room, I am leaning towards Dwarf fruit trees that can grow in large pots. This is a great alternative for those of you who are condo and apartment dwellers.
My ultimate goal is to get everything up and growing and then encouraging people in my community to do the same by approaching our HOA and then bringing this to our City Council. I can't fix AIG or the banks, but I can try to empower my community to change how they see food and their relastionship to it. My daughter's elementary school has a community garden for the Kindergarten classes! This is public school, I know there is a hunger out there for these things, so why not supply the food for thought. The other battle? Lets see if I can get my city to allow people to own one or two chickens in their backyards if they so please.
And here is what a raised container bed might look like (stollen from google, not ours!), the beauty of building it yourself is that you can customize to your unique situation.