A rental garden

Every year I am faced with the same problem, gardening season comes a long and I get this "farmer's child itch." With that every year my loving DP reminds me that we are renting and we cannot go digging up the yard for a huge garden that has the potential to feed us year round. This year has been extra tough. We live a wonderful rental with a huge lot, and LOTS of shade. The trees are a welcoming oasis in the summer time, but not so much if I plan on growing anything.


The opening in the Trees right above the deck.

My resolve is growing everything in containers. A month ago I went out into the shed to take stock of everything we had only to find we'd left most of our large containers in the mountains. I was sad, we'd just started making back our initial investment from those containers. At that point I was just going to give up, and spend the rest of the summer hunting down cheap tomatoes, and zucchini.

My DP had other intentions, I came home from a wonderful mother's day picnic to find that he'd bought me all of the plants I needed for a my garden. He knows how much I love growing my own food. (who wouldn't, it tastes a 1000 times better than anything at the grocery store) Then he asked me where the containers were. I had to tell him the news about our old containers. He was disappointed and recommended we ask our land lords if we could plant in the ground. The problem however there's not one spot in our yard the receives a full 6 hours of sun. The only place that meets that condition is our back deck. I told him my plans to do containers again, even though in years past we'd had so so results.

We made a plan and I went shopping, only to have my head explode at the sheer cost of new containers. We bought our first containers using a gift card and some we'd gotten for free from various sources. There was no way I was paying $10 for a 5 gallon plastic "Flower pot" made in China. I told DP while we were looking that I was off to search the store of an "alternative."

My thinking was any large plastic container would do as long as I put enough holes in the bottom, along with a few inches of gravel. I found some 10 gallon rope handle tubs and one large Rubbermaid tub. I took them home and drilled about 15 holes in the Rope tubs and 40 or more holes in the Rubbermaid tub.

Here are a few pictures of the final results.

Zucchini and Peppers in Rubbermaid tub. Tomato in 10 gallon Rope tub