With only one side remaining open on the shelves of the greenhouse, I had to figure out what I would want to fill them up with. I could've repeated the same thing with more bucket beds or even more hydroponic assemblies but I figured it would be better to use the third form of raised bed I've been using around the garden and that is the drum bed. As you've seen in past posts, the drum beds consist of a plastic drum cut in half the long way and the two halves being used as raised beds, suspended by a wooden table. In the case of our shelf in the greenhouse, the space is large enough to accommodate the two halves of a 55 gallon plastic drum I happen to have laying around. I would have to add some wood around the drum halves to better secure the drum beds and fill in any gaps that may remain in the base shelf, which is fine, I was just happy that the drum halves actually fit in the opening. So the first thing was chopping the drum in half. With the drum halves staged in the opening in the greenhouse, the first thing I did was cut and put together a support board to go on the end, in the corner where the short shelf meets the open shelf. This board was made up from another piece of 2x6. Because of how the wall sections mated together, it created a joint that would not allow the end of the board to meet completely flush. I had to cut a notch out of part of the end of the board so the end would "wrap" around the joint where the two wall panels join together. Also, because the side of the board would have to sit on the horizontal tube of one of the wall frames, I couldn't use a full 2x6 board for a tie board underneath. I had to cut a piece of 2x4 and attach it to the opposite side of the 2x6 so when I set the board on the horizontal tubes of the wall frames, it would fit in place and still allow the smaller tie board to go underneath the shelf boards. After doing these preparations with the board, everything fit together rather well. I secured everything with screws then moved on to hang one of the drum halves. To help make this a little easier I prepared several screws with washers and partially drove them into the top lip of the drum half so once I got the drum half where I wanted it I can just put the impact driver in place and finish driving the screws all the way in. With some finesse, I got the drum half in place where I wanted and drove several screws in to hold the drum half at the end mating to the previous board I put in as well as the main shelf board. This was more than enough to hold the drum half in place while I get some more wood in place. For the board that would amount to a divider/support board, going between the two drum halves, I decided to use a salvaged piece of 2x10 board from the scrap pile. This piece even happened to be just long enough that after I cut the excess from the board, I had enough for a tie board on the end of the large board. After assembling this support board I put it in place, securing it to the main shelf board, drilling a hole through the other end and into the wall frame tube to secure the board there, and securing the drum half against this newly installed board. With that, I had the drum half secured on three sides, I still had to put a board on the wall side of the drum half, which would also involve securing the board to the newly added wood as well as securing the drum half to that piece of wood. I ended up keeping things simple for this board. After cutting a piece of 2x4 (which conveniently fit like a glove in this cavity), I took some straight braces and attached them to both ends of the 2x4 then after putting the board in place, secured the whole works with screws to the braces to hold the board to the divider board and the end board on the other side of the drum half. With that board in place I finished up the drum half with more wood screws with washers. From there I moved on and got the second drum half hung the same way I started off the first drum half, by securing the piece on two sides with screw/washers partially screwed in prior to putting the drum half up to the shelf. Now this is where using what I have available comes into play. For the boards that I would use on the other end of the drum half and the wall side of the drum half, I couldn't do the typical tie board setup like I had been doing previously. Other tie boards from the boards of the shelving setup more or less were in the way, so I would have to use some braces like I did on the last board for the first drum half, only problem is I didn't have any more straight braces. So the next best thing I found to use were some funny brackets that are used when building wood frame structures like sheds or porches. These brackets fasten to one board by themselves, then you place the other board inside the bracket, which has tabs with more holes to allow you to secure the added board to the bracket, making a flush mount where the two boards meet one another. I had several such brackets that were salvaged from the old porch I tore down a while back so I pressed some of these brackets into service to hold the end support board on the second drum half as well as the wall side support board for the same drum half. I used a couple more braces for the wall side board to hold it in place just as well. Since this board did meet up against the central vertical portion of tubing in the wall frame, I had to cut a notch in the board to allow the board to fit around that section of tubing. After securing the board to the brackets I drilled and applied one wood screw to hold the board to the horizontal tube on the wall frame. From there I finished things up with more wood screws and washers for the remaining two sides of the drum half to fully secure the piece within the shelf, along side its sister drum half. With all the shelves accommodated with some form of raised bed garden assembly, now I can move on to some more intricate work. I still have to do more finish work on the 6" pipe hydroponic garden setup. Large holes have to be cut along the pipes for the cups and holes need to be drilled and tapped for pipe fittings so I can get the drain pipe manifold set up between all the hydroponic gardens as well as a pipe line that would be feeding plant water to all four gardens. This will be the next order of business.
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