Projects

So besides the actual gardening and growing I had to do some related projects. First was a raincatch. This isn't really mandatory for the square foot gardening, but I do need it to grow my blueberries. As I mentioned in an earlier post, blueberries like acidic soil, and I got around that by putting the blueberries in containers. However I could ruin it all by watering the containers from the hose, adding in all the alkalinity from the groundwater. I'm surely not going to buy bottled or purified water, so I decided on collecting rainwater. I looked at raincatches at Home Depot (where I have been spending a disturbing amount of time and money recently) but they were too expensive and all seemed poorly designed. I decided to build a cheap one my own. I bought a 54 gallon Rubbermaid container, some 1 1/2 inch PVC, PVC elbow joints, screen, and zip ties. I think you can get an idea of the construction from the pictures:

I have no idea how well this will hold up, but the total of all the materials was around $28.00 and it took about 30 minutes to put together. The screen is to prevent mosquitoes from using the raincatch as a birthing pool.

Like a hobo Ive been keeping the rainwater in milk jugs and other bottles and hopefully this will be enough for the blueberries. After about two months rain and snow, I have about 40 gallons of water:

Yes, I know I drink a lot of soda.

For now Ive retired the raincatch. I have plenty of water, and when I run out I can just put the container under the drip line of the roof and it will be full.

The next project was a composter. Again, I looked at a bunch of fancy ones at home depot and they ended up being quite expensive. I bought a small, heavy-duty plastic trashcan and just drilled about 30 holes in the bottom and sides with a 5/8" boring bit, to allow oxygen into the compost:

In the end, this cost about 15 dollars and will be important for making my own compost for future plantings. Here it is after a month or so (I turn it every week or so):

ah Swiss chard...

Finally, I wanted to construct a kind of cage to prevent varmits from getting in to the vegetables and either eating the seeds, the fruit, or the plants themselves. I did it with 3/4" PVC and a few T and elbow joints. The top is a woven trellis and later I think I will put wire around the sides. I specifically made it so that I can scale it up by replacing the vertical supports.

Its going to be pretty awesome when I come out one morning and find a raccoon who has gotten himself trapped inside.