After unearthing some plastic drums from a far off area of the greater yard, I had decided to use some of these drums for planters in the garden. Even though these are plastic drums with removable lids, I can cut them in half the short way to make regular standalone planters for trees or bushes and the like. Even the half of the drum with the removable lid can still be used by just putting the locking ring on the lid to hold it in place on the drum.
Another thing that I had to take care of is removing a couple of old tire planters I had right in the middle of the garden. One still had some blackberry plants in it while the other was just weeds. The weedy one was trimmed down and I pulled that tire up and flattened the rooty dirt into the ground to even it out. From there I pulled up the blackberries then the tire and flattened that dirt as well. After removing the blackberries from the 2nd tire, I had some leftover dirt from our previous episodes of filling raised beds so I used that to fill one of the plastic drum halves in order to plant the blackberries. I even had one small blackberry plant in another tire planter that has a fruit tree within it as well. I figured I may as well uproot that plant and add it to the plastic drum so that planter will be strictly a blackberry planter. I'll take care of the fruit tree later when we get more dirt. As for the two drum planters, I figured I'd locate them along the line of drum planters where I had already been adding drums to. I even moved another solitary drum planter that was still situated by the newly added drum raised beds. When I start making another set of raised beds I'll start a new row that will run parallel to that most recent set of beds. Just like with the raised beds, the drum planters will run in a row that's parallel to the raised beds. The whole concept is to have the garden arranged in a grid style layout to simplify things when it comes to maintenance of the garden, as well as aesthetics. As I was adding dirt I even took time to grab some compost from our tumbler composter (which we still haven't mounted yet in all this time) to fill the drum to help feed the blackberries. I set the blackberries on top of the compost then added a full bag of dirt over and around the roots of the plants to finish things up. I'll end up adding more dirt in the future as we get some more but for right now there's enough dirt in the drum to cover the roots of the plants. On the drum halves, the half with the removable lid was easy to address as far as drainage is concerned because all I had to do was remove the caps from the lid, problem solved. As for the bottom half, I drilled several holes with a step bit to that planter will have plenty of drainage. This is the planter that has the blackberries inside. As for the other drum, more than likely I'll plant that one fruit tree that is still in the other tire planter so I can get rid of that tire as well. Other things that I still need to do in the garden is trim some of the larger trees to help make things a little neater as well as make the pathways more accessible for us so we're not having to duck and bob and weave to go around branches. Also trimming the trees is healthy for them as it rids the trees of dead and dying branches. Of course I'll have to add more gravel, especially around where I previously laid a path since the path now has drum planters over it. I'll also have to lay gravel down over the patch of ground next to the row of raised beds where I removed the one drum so I can have the area ready to set the raised beds on. As time progresses the garden will evolve into a better version than anything we could've envisioned in the years past.
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