Adventures in container gardening! Part 2

Today I found out I can get a bunch of old tires from this guy on Freecycle which works out awesome since I want to stack them 4 tall and use them to plant potatoes. I'm so excited they won't take up a ton of room and I will be able to do at least 4 of them in my back yard, yay!!!!!!! Even if can't use until next year we are on our way.  http://www.kiddiegardens.com/growing_potatoes_in_tires.html

Adventures in container gardening!!!!

So in keeping with my theme of healthy living and eating on a budget this year my family and I are trying to do some organic container gardening along with planting in some raised beds in the backyard. I know, I know it sounds crazy, but I take it as an adventure and also I am counting it as part of our science curriculum for homeschooling purposes. We are far behind schedule because I had wanted to do a summer garden and that didn't happen however we did grow some herbs and flowers in flower boxes out front. Now we are working on finishing our raised beds in the backyard (that I have had the materials for ALL summer long), so we can finish planting our fall garden since our lettuce is in flower boxes for the time being. I did learn a tip from one of my co-workers that you can grow lettuce in those black plastic trays that they put the plastic flower pots in at the store as long as you space them out because they do not need much soil or deep soil. So we really are learning as we go! This week we are also starting our compost one major necessity for gardening is healthy soil and compost is a cheap easy and eco friendly way to do that. I was going to make a compost bin from grocery store pallets but instead I have decided to use a large trash can for two reasons 1) I don't have to put it together I already have the raised beds to make I don't need another construction project :-) 2) It won't look like a compost pile it will just look like a trash can in my back yard by my garage which is a good thing when dealing with nosy urban neighbors.   I will be doing a separate blog on compost later.
Anyways, we are going to try to keep it simple and just plant a few things lettuce, spinach, potatoes, and onions. We will see how this goes wish us luck!!