Recycling and gardening

A blog post? What???? I know I haven't blogged in so long but since I have no classes and (much) less hours at work than I want this summer, I decided to try to get back into this. I'm also trying to add some Amazon Affiliate links but only to things I have used or read that I mention in my posts.

I love fresh vegetables. Nothing is better than a fresh tomato straight from the garden. In the past I lived in an apartment with a great patio. Though I was on the bottom floor the patio ledge made a perfect place for container gardening. I used the EarthBox® Green Container Gardening System which worked GREAT. I bought the staking system for my tomatoes and have also grown peppers, chard, and herbs in the system. I recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a yard or who can't do a full garden. Last year I moved into my boyfriend's house and he has two acres of land. I still used the Earthboxes because I was taking summer classes and just couldn't get to a full garden. Unfortunately my tomatoes got blight. Worried that emptying the dirt out (far from anything else in the yard) and washing the boxes out wouldn't get rid of it all, I am trying the square foot gardening method this year.

Square foot gardening is all over Pinterest and blogs. The book by Mel Bartholomew, All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition: The Revolutionary Way to Grow More In Less Space,seems to be the bible for this method. Initially I had planned to make two 3' x 3' boxes out of cedar. I was at the store to buy the materials for the boxes and the ingredients for the box fill when my boyfriend called and asked if I could use the kiddie pool the previous owners of his house had left behind. Uh, yeah. Saving the time and cost of building the boxes, helping him clear out the area next to the garage, and putting a plastic pool to use instead of it ending up in a landfill? Win-win-win situation. To that end...my kiddie pool garden.

I used a cordless drill and a large bit to put some drainage holes in the bottom of the pool and filled it with Mel's Mix. Filling it to the level of the seats on the left side put the depth right around 6". Since the middle row was a bit bigger than the edges, that row is divided into 5 square foot sections while the near and far edges in the picture are divided into 4. I've got a variety of tomatoes and peppers from County Line Greenhouse in Hobart, IN, some iceberg lettuce since that's the only lettuce my boyfriend will eat, cucumber and zucchini plants, and I seeded one square foot with some mesclun mix. I will keep posting on how this garden turns out. Maybe your kids have outgrown a pool or you can pick one up cheaply and put it to use in your garden.