Each year, I try to incorporate a number of vegetables into my backyard garden. This spring I decided to up my gardening game and create a container garden in the back corner of the yard!
Inspired by the galvanized trough gardens I’ve seen, I set out to design my very own space. Once I sketched out the layout of the garden, I headed to my local Tractor Supply to pick up 5 galvanized stock tanks and headed home to get started.
Once I returned home, I got to work and took the following steps:
- Laid landscape cover over the designated area and moved the containers in place. Note: You’ll want to make sure the ground under each container is level prior to laying your landscape cover.
- Filled 1/3 of each container with sticks and branches.
- Added 1/3 layer of leaves and other material from my compost bin.
- Filled the remaining 1/3 of the container with my soil mix (see bottom of post for my recipe) – leaving about 4 inches from the top of the container open.
This method is know as Hugelkulture and is a low cost method that uses organic garden waste material to fill 2/3 of the container. I like it because prevents the need to fill the container entirely with soil and allows the plant roots to grow deeper. In addition, it retains moisture and reduces my watering time.
Once the soil was in place, I watered each container thoroughly and planted my seeds. Tomatoes, lettuce, micro greens, carrots, radishes, beans, pepper, oregano, cilantro, rosemary, parsley, zinnias and sunflowers made the list!
After the seeding was complete, I finished the walkway, boarder, and put down pine straw.
The project from start to finish took 2 days and can be completed over a weekend.
If you are interested in my soil recipe and other details, e.g. container size, walkway and boarders, I’ve provided the information below:
Soil recipe:
- 1/4 compost
- 1/4 natural soil (by this I mean the soil in your yard or top soil you can purchase)
- 1/4 Mother Earth Coco Bale (I order mine via Amazon)
- 1/4 Perlite ( I order mine in bulk from Amazon)
Containers: Tractor Supply Galvanized Stock Tanks 2ft W x 4ft L x 2ft H
Walkway: Rubber pavers from Lowes Home Improvement.
Boarder: 4×4 inch recycled wood beams (these used to be part of our fence but were blown down during the last hurricane!)
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