Container Gardening Part 2 - Preparing our Containers

 Now that we have all the containers we need and the dirt to fill them, it was time to put everything together!  I visited our old house (my mother still owns it, so I wasn't trespassing in case you were worried) and remembered our compost area!  I decided to grab a few buckets of compost to mix in with the dirt we had acquired.  The compost was perfect!  There is just something about playing in the dirt that is relaxing to me...

We had a handful of 5 gallon buckets so D was in charge of drilling holes in the bottoms for water drainage.  We used a half inch drill bit to make the holes.  We put about 8-10 holes in each of the bottoms of the buckets.  As you can see, he got a little creative with his holes towards the end :)

 We had some pots that were pretty dingy looking even after washing.  I had some old spray paint in the garage so we had a painting party and spruced up a few of the pots to add some color to our collection!

We had a couple different strategies in filling our buckets.  I wanted to make sure that there was adequate water drainage but we quickly found out that adding dirt to the buckets after putting holes in them, the dirt was falling out of the bottom.  We decided to add  about an inch of rock to the bottom of the buckets and then put our dirt mixture on top.  Once we ran out of rock, we used some old mulch that we had on hand and filled the bottom of the bucket with a layer of mulch and then added the dirt.  Both methods seem to work, so I would suggest either.  We just used what we already had on hand, if you are doing this and don't want to spend any money on mulch or rock, you can always go out exploring and find rock on your own.  We live by a lake so the beach is an easy source to find rocks or reach out to people who might have some that you can have.  It doesn't take very many to fill the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket.

Once the bottoms of the buckets were prepared it was time to fill them up with our dirt mixture!  We mixed our compost in with the black dirt we found.  The kids had a blast filling up all the containers.  Once that was done, it was time to call it a day.  Honestly it was one of the best days we have had in a while at the Frugal household.  Getting outside, playing in dirt, working on a project.  I told my hubby I don't think I heard the kids fight once!  It was awesome.

Now, it's time to plant!  Yay.  That will be in my next post.  Stay tuned!