Weekend Projects pt 2.

To continue on my previous post...

Other than just starting some seedlings, I wanted to get serious about planting veggies. As I have said earlier, husband and I are renting, so we need somesemi-permanent planting methods. We wanted to do raised beds, but we didn't want to cause any problems. Instead we decided to try container gardening.

Containers sounded like the perfect solution for us. We could try our first vegetable garden on a small scale, not place anything we couldn't remove, and not damage the rental property. There was one problem. Planters are expensive!!!

Inspired by a post I saw on pinterest where a woman was growing potatoes in a tall landry hamper, I decided to see if I could use landry hampers to plant. I went hunting and found hampers at WalMart and the various dollar stores for $2-3 each.

I lined each one with my junk mail (like grocery store mailers) that I have been kepping in my "paper to be recycled box." I had some masking and painters tape in a craft box from when husband and I painted an accent wall in the living room. So, the cost of turning a laundry hamper into a planter was free.

You can see the regular landry basket in the background. In front you can see my basket lined with a gracery store add, and the blue tape I used to hold it in place. As you can see from the photo, the soil stayed in the basket very nicely. I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Another technique I tried was using these pails and buckets I found at the dollar store. They are brightly colored and have nice handles on them. The only problem is that they didn't have any holes in them for drainage. I meant to drill some holes in them (or have husband do it) but completely forgot! So, I got to have the fun of drilling holes after I had already planted in them *facepalm*

Let me say this, using a drill and a bit, most of the buckets gave way and I had perfect drainage holes around the bottom with about 5 seconds of constant pressue with the drill.

pretty, right?

On some of them, just putting the drill onto the bucket made the plastic crap out.

And I would end up with this mess (which happened to several of my buckets)

And some of them , after 30 or 45 seconds of pressure with the drill would suddenly bust like the hole above...

And leave me with this drill-sized hole...which happened twice.

So...learn from my mistake. Drill your holes before you plant so you don't end up with a nightmare. And good luck! lol. These buckets were only a dollar, and I bought about 10-12 of them. Similar sized planters at Wal-Mart and Lowes were $4-12 each (depending on how fancy they were). Even with the cheapies, I saved about $30 just by buying cheap buckets and drilling my own weep holes as opposed to buying planting pots.

And, at the end of the day, I have my first wave of plants in the dirt. More to come at the end of March and April. But for February, I'm finished (good thing it is already the beginning of March...)

Please ignore my neighbor's junked out yard, haha

At the end of the day, I planted 7 baskets of yellow onions, 2 baskets of peas, 2 baskets of carrots, 2 baskets of cucumbers, 3 buckets of tomatoes, and 10 buckets of strawberries (I let my lovely niece plant those, and she insisted we plant the whole pack, lol) Not too bad for a day's work.