Sunday, March 21, 2010

Steel Planter Boxes; urban garden

After looking at an untold number of single family houses to buy and getting out bid four times on shit holes that weren't even move in ready, we were worn out and completely discouraged. So we decided to take our landlord's offer and buy the townhouse that we had been renting for the past 2+ years. Buying a townhouse at first seemed like we were settling due to the lack of a garden. So this year (now that we're done with the inside re-model, the sauna, and the pizza oven) we have decided to focus on getting a garden in.  The 19th and Union corner of the house was completely overtaken by ornamentals doing us no good. These just had to come out. It has now been 5 weeks of a completely full yard waste bin and one full truck load to the dump and we are finally rid of the corner ornamentals.

Instead of using untreated lumber that breaks down quickly (but is nice and cheap) or cedar that's really expensive we decided to try something a little different with our raised beds. They are made of some 3/16 and some 1/8 inch plate steel. We were able to get most of the metal as scrap at 50 cents per pound and the rest of it was 90 cents a pound. But with it all weighing in at over 400 pounds it wasn't cheap at roughly $300 for the set of three beds. Two of the beds are ~8x3' and one is ~5x3' for a grand total of ~65 square feet of urban gardening fun. We also built  a 6' tall trellis for peas and beans.