Container Gardening Part 1 - Finding Supplies

Our family has decided to dive deep into container gardening this year.  Since moving into town we have tried the last 2 years planting some veggies in pots and having them in the yard.  It never works.  I had problems with the deer and honestly, I just never put in a whole lot of effort.  It wasn't very exciting to think about having a couple pots of veggies when I was used to having this...

 However, this year we are going to make a full on container garden on our 12 by 12 foot deck! 

We talked about planting a garden in the backyard.  Starting from scratch seemed like a LOT of work.  Even putting in raised beds seemed a little daunting, not to mention a huge expense.  We have deer and rabbits so the only way to put in a backyard garden would be to put up a fence.  Between not wanting to go into the stores and trying to stay as frugal as possible we started compiling ideas and ways we could container garden on the cheap.  I brainstormed with the kids on how we were going to tackle this.  Here is what we came up with.

1.  What do we want to plant?  The obvious answer was EVERYTHING but we knew that wouldn't be possible with the amount of space we had.  We still have a decent amount of home canned green beans and corn, plus those are easy to get from stands, produce auctions, and some of our family/friends so we immediately checked those off the list.  

2.  What do we enjoy and eat the most?  Salad greens across the board.  We all love salad, so we knew this was something we wanted a lot of.  Here is what we came up with for our "wants"

Salad

Spinach

Cucumbers

Tomatoes

Peppers

Radish

Beets (my son is obsessed with The Office, so we are trying these)

3.  How many and what type of containers do we want?  Hubby and I were all about using what we had on hand and what we could acquire for free or cheap.  We went through our garage and found a bunch of old pots and 5 gallon buckets that we weren't currently using.  I also reached our to friends, family and neighbors asking if anyone had any pots or 5 gallons puts they wanted to get rid of.  I got a few responses and soon had accumulated 10 extra pots FOR FREE!

4.  Dirt.  It killed me to think that we might actually have to buy dirt.  After thinking for awhile it dawned on me that with all the construction going on around us, maybe there would be some dirt that needed to be gotten rid of!  D, E, and I drove around the neighborhood and finally came across some crews moving dirt for a new house that was being built.  We stopped and I got out and asked the worker is he had any dirt that wasn't going to be used.  Not only did he say yes, he actually brought be a huge bucket load of black dirt to the curb so we had less walking distance.  The kids and I brought some 5 gallon buckets from home and we were able to make a couple trips and get all the dirt that we needed.  FOR FREE!!  

Our current cost for our container garden is $0 dollars!

Now that we have the space, we have the containers, we have the dirt.   All we have left to get is the seeds!  That will be Gardening Part 2!  Stay tuned!