How Does Your Garden Grow?

When I was a kid, my parents had a pretty substantial vegetable garden. It took up a large portion of the lot that they owned just past the end of our backyard.

I remember tending the garden wasn't my favorite thing to do when I was a kid, but the thrill and pride of growing something yourself has stayed with me as I have gotten older.

This is a picture from my garden a couple of years ago. My cherry tomato plants always seem to do well, but the other things I try to grow not so much...

A couple of weeks ago I dug down into my garden to see just exactly what I was working with. To my surprise, I found that about a foot below the surface it is pretty much solid rocks. Once they work through the existing soil, there is really nowhere for the roots to go.

This got me thinking about what I could do differently to make my garden more successful this year. My parents now plant their garden in buckets on racks so it is easier for them to reach, but the plants go through a large amount of water.

My wife and I camp a lot during the summer, so being around to water the garden constantly is not an option.

Pictured here are some of the buckets that I got from my mom and dad. They get them from a local grocery store. The buckets come with frosting in them for the bakery and then they clean them and sell them cheaply after they are finished with them.

You can see that my mom and dad had already drilled holes in the bottom of these to help the water drain.

My plan was to get a little more drastic than that. I wanted to cut the bottoms out of the buckets completely so that I could then fill them with potting soil on top of the existing garden bed.

This would give the roots plenty of room to grow and expand. I want them to have lots of surface area to pull nutrients.

I would have preferred to use an oscillating tool to cut the bottoms out of the buckets, but I don't have one, so I had to pull out my trusty Dremel rotary tool.

Rotary tools are really handy to have around if you ever get the chance to purchase one. You can cut, grind, sand, and clean with it, they are pretty amazing.
There are other brands besides Dremel, but Dremel has been making them as long as I can remember.

I used the ceramic cutting wheel because that is all I had. Ideally, I would have used a fiberglass cutting wheel because the ceramic ones tend to break as you try to follow the contour of the bucket.

I probably went through about seven of the cutting wheels by the time I was done modifying all three buckets.

Good thing the kit I bought came with a small container holding about 50 of the ceramic cutting wheels.

By the time I was done, this is how they looked. They don't have to be perfect, I just want enough room for the roots to be able to work their way down and the worms to be able to work their way up.

I had picked up four 40lb bags of potting soil from the local hardware store earlier that morning.

I was now ready to place the buckets and fill them.

Four bags of potting soil ended up being way too much. I kept the extra though because I have a feeling the soil will settle over time and I may need to add more.

I also might want to add a fourth bucket to the left of the last one in the picture here.

Although I enjoy gardening, I hate weeding. I decided that I was going to mow the lawn next and throw the grass clippings around the buckets.

My hope is that the clippings will work as a combination mulch/compost.

I knew ahead of time that I was going to plant some tomatoes again this year, so that is why I put the cage in the one bucket before I filled it.

I am hoping to maybe plant some jalapeno peppers in the other buckets. I just need to make sure we have had our last frost, then I can pick up the plants from the local nursery.

Here is another view of the garden, it isn't huge, but it is just my wife and I, so we really don't need a ton.

If I can get a good batch of Jalapeno's, I will probably pickle them.

The tomatoes we will eat throughout the summer as we need them.

Thanks for stopping in and checking out my garden. I hope to post a follow up as things start to grow!

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