Sometimes you just gotta start somewhere.

Jayne, is this your school project? Are the bottoms cut out of the boxes? I'm curious that the depth of the box is not sufficient for the roots. What are you growing in them? I really like the recycle-ability of the boxes!

It is the school project. They had no budget and no soil...only dirt sooooooo. I cut about a 9" square out of the bottom of the box then lasagna'd the box using free Starbucks grounds and kitchen scraps for the nitrogen and shredded newspaper and brown grocery bags for the carbon. I added a little homebrewed microbes to get the process started. The boxes are topped off with about 4" of potting mix. Everything is short rooted and fast growing because I have 7th and 8th graders who have the attention span of a gnat on some days. And, we needed something to offer instant gratification while we hole compost the ground for future planting. We have carrots, lettuce, onions, bok choy, radishes, spinach and peas. I am going to put tomatoes in boxes...got the idea from you really. You sent me something about growing toms in compost so I am going to hole compost then place the box, put in more compost, add some soil, then mulch. Right now we have ripe tomatoes in ebuckets. BTW the boxes held up real well in the recent rain. We just had a visit from three other schools who want to garden but have no budget either and they could not believe we were gardening in cardboard boxes so they had to see for themselves. We may have more Redneck Cardboard Box Gardens around our town.

Very nice! Excellent use of cardboard boxes!

Great work, Jayne.
I'm posting your comment to the GreenCubitLink in Sustainability.

Some body had to munch a lot of chips to empty those boxes. Can't think of anything better than a bunch of 7th and 8th graders to accomplish that task!

VERY cool project!

There was somebody on the tomato forum at DG that t bought bags of garden soil, cut a hole in the top and a couple of small ones in the bottom for drainage and had nice looking tomato plants growing in them. They were just sitting on the ground all lined up nice and pretty. Just a thought if a couple of your parents want to donate something.

Sounds like a good idea for me, Dan.. Love the boxes too.

I have a friend that used to garden directly in the bags. It does work really well. I want to bring in a load of compost from Singh Farms and was pondering how to contain it and lo and behold Rayman posts something on DG about wattles. So now we will have cardboard boxes, ebuckets and wattles.

Ummm... I may regret asking this, especially if Ray is in any way involved, but...

What's a wattle?

Be brave, Jill...I'm right behind you. Jo

Gee, thanks, Jo! As long as you promise to resuscitate me with chocolate, it's all good!

http://www.greenzona.com/

Wattles...you've seen them haven't you...just not in this application.

Jayne, I'm willing to bet you are not paying $275 for a wattle kit. How will you make them? We have built up berms using quarter-minus gravel around my garden beds and I'm hoping that will work. The quarter-minus compacts well over time.

You are right...that is way too much. There is a place in town over by 19th Av and North of Deer Valley that sells these for $18.75. They are a 9" diameter and 25' long. The school wants to hire me to teach gardening for two months while the teacher I partner with moves to sports. I thought I would use the money they pay me to get the compost and wattles.

I like the versatility of being able to free form the waddles. This adds an interesting deminsion to planning the layout of the garden spaces.

Cool... I haven't see this before!

OH! I thought you were talking about the "wattle" under my chin....LOL

Oh I like these too! I may have a place or two I can put some of these for more veggies, thanks for the info. (especially the much cheaper $$)

Susie

They have another store in Phoenix at 3880 E. Broadway for all you Eastsiders. I am not affiliated with them at all; just a googler that wants wattles for my school project.