Even though we already have some plants established in the garden for the year, we ended up getting some more that turned up late. Now even with that, I still have a few tomatoes I haven't found homes for yet as I hadn't had a chance to really build any more raised bed gardens or hydroponics. The ole lady came home with some squash and sweet potatoes that had turned up. With all available planting space tied up, I pretty much had to go the route I had been, building more drum or bucket raised bed gardens. In this case since I had some unused plastic drums in the back of the compound by the fuel shed, I decided I may as well put these unused items to use. That'll kill two birds with one stone, I'll clean up some more area by using up the barrels along with the bulk lumber stored in the back, and establish some more raised beds in the garden. First thing I did was gather a barrel and some 4x4 boards and a landscape timber from the scrap wood pile along with some lengths of salvaged 2x4's. After that I had to take the barrel and mark it all the way around, the long way so I can cut the barrel in half, making two long halves for two garden assemblies. I started measuring out the 2x4s, cutting two lengths to span the length of the barrel half on either side, then measured the width across the middle of the drum, which would be the top of the garden when turned right side up, adding three inches since I would have to nail two more boards on either side of the assembly. I cut those two boards then nailed the works together to make a base that would cradle the barrel half within. I then used some wood screws and fender washers to hold the cut middle of the drum to the wood cradle. Now for the large boards. I measured and cut four 3ft lengths of 4x4 and landscape timber boards to serve as the legs of the cradle. Now since I don't have any nails or wood screws that are over four inches long to ensure a good attachment to the cradle, I had to drill some pilot holes in the posts so when I screwed the wood screws in, they would go all the way into the posts and bottom out around 3 inches, giving me enough thread to grab into the 2x4 boards of the cradle. I got the two posts done on one side. Before I moved to the other side I wanted to put some reinforcement on these two posts. I straightened the two posts to ensure they were pretty straight and measured and cut another 2x4 then nailed it in place about half way up the posts in order to keep them held straight when I flip the assembly over to do the other two posts. After that I repeated the same thing on the other side of the assembly, doing all the same things to ensure that all the posts were sturdy and straight. After having all four posts done I then measured and cut two more 2x4 boards to nail in place on the ends of the barrel, to keep the two sides evenly spaced apart so underneath there are four support boards holding the legs straight and sturdy. Since this thing is going to hold a bunch of moist dirt, it needs to be as strong as possible. After flipping the garden assembly right side up I drilled 5 3/8" holes in place using the same drill bit that I used to drill the pilot holes in the posts. With that it was ready to move to the garden spot. The spot in question already had one of my old generation drum raised beds but time and rust caused the pipe legs to pull free as the drum rusted so the thing was laying on the ground. I emptied the dirt into 5 gallon buckets and set those aside then pulled the legs completely free from the drum. The legs got tossed into the scrap metal pile to hopefully be used in a future project while the drum with large rust holes where the legs were, got staged with the outgoing scrap metal. I was hoping to be able to recycle this drum in a new gen drum raised bed but nope, not with this one, its going to scrap. After we moved the new garden assembly in place where the old gen unit sat, I had to cut a couple of 2x8 boards into 8" lengths to act as feet to rest the bottoms of the posts on due to the unevenness of the ground where the old drum bed sat. With the assembly even on the ground I filled it up half with the old dirt from the old raised bed and the rest with a bad of raised bed soil. The old dirt already had some chicken litter mulch mixed up so this combination of planting medium should be real good for the plants going in there. The plants I chose were the two squash plants the ole lady got. Since there was only two of them it only seemed fit to use these since I already had a bunch of tomatoes planted. Also since the old drum bed also had a micro irrigation line and sprinker planted within, all I had to do was take that stake and plant it in the new garden so it has instant water access. I'm still in the process of expanding the micro irrigation system by running PVC lines around the garden so I can tap into them to feed lines over to the other established drum and barrel gardens that have plants within them. Aside from that, I do still have another barrel/drum garden to build since I still have the other half to the drum. Not to mention I still have three more drums stacked in the back by the fuel shed. I probably won't use all three for drum beds, but who knows, I might say screw it and just build them up, I can always get more plastic drums if I need them. As it stands, this particular model of raised bed is the easiest to build and allows me a good planting medium for two plants. The bucket planters are good but require more fertilizer due to the small amount of soil within. These drum halves hold about 13 gallons of dirt so for the two plants that's 6.5 gallons of dirt per plant versus the 4-5 gallons in the bucket bed per plant. Of course for the same foot print the bucket beds hold eight buckets for eight plants versus two plants in the barrel/drum bed. Either way, these raised bed assemblies allow me to get more plants into play over a lesser area than when they're in the ground.
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