Alternatives included, "Real Estate is the Basis of all Wealth," and "It's Hard Work Being a Hippie"

Here is a simple and cheap method for cobbling together a major garden project in a relatively short time. It can also be deconstructed at the end of the growing season. I came up with this idea primarily because I am lazy, and hate to attempt to dig planting holes in the concrete that calls itself soil in my Southern California backyard. Also, I have dogs that will dig of their own volition, but never where you request them to dig.

Another thing that is absolutely essential here in the Inland Empire, I have found, is some kind of automatic irrigation. Perhaps it is just me and that laziness again, but the plants cannot count on me to drag myself out there and water them every day. This results in spotty watering: too much watering some days, not enough watering other days, forgetting to water altogether on some days, etc. So a simple automatic sprinkling system is included.

This is a first time project, so everyone will find out how it works out along with me. In the past, I have had very ambitious vegetable garden plans, but results have been uniformly poor, except for a bumper crop of tomatoes a few years ago.. I am a complete gardening novice, so please pardon me if anything included here seems simplistic or obvious. Please feel free to email your opinions, especially if you think I have given any incorrect advice, I am doing something wrong or planting something in the wrong place, or you think something just plain is not going to work, etc.

Okay, let us begin. The area is in full sun at this minute, because an overhanging pecan tree in the neighbor's yard is bereft of its leaves at this time (January). Eventually, the area will be in partial shade.

One of the barrels that we used.

They originally contained a substance used to make the paint on roadways reflective. I refer to it as "shiny sand." It is applied directly to the wet paint on the roadways. The shiny sand does not actually come in contact with the barrels, but is packaged in thick plastic bags inside them.

The barrels are made of a very tough cardboard (not corrugated). They have a thick, strong metal ring at the top and bottom. I do not know what the metal is. They will hold water, as we found when one filled up with rain in a recent storm. I would not recommend transporting water in them, as I am sure they would disintegrate eventually, but for the purposes listed here, I am confident in their ability to function.

I am aware that everyone can not come by cardboard barrels. If you are local in Southern California and would like some cardboard barrels, please email me.

I understand that plastic barrels are also available? They would also work, as would any container that could be raised above the ground and is open at both ends. You could even use those big plastic pots that they sell at Home Depot and Garden stores, if you cut the bottoms off of them.

The point of my plan, as opposed to just having a container garden, is that the roots of the plants can grow down into the native soil eventually, if it is necessary for them to do so.

There was not a whole lot of preparation, actually. We cut them in half with a circular saw, and cut the bottoms out with the same circular saw. The decision that had to be made next was whether to put the metal ring at the top, or put it on the ground. We decided to put the metal rings on the ground, with the idea that the barrels (now half-barrels) would hold their shape better, once filled with soil, if the metal rings were ground-side down.

The layout for the 18 barrel array. Click here for an enlargement of the diagram.

The 1/2 inch PVC pipe was placed about 4.5 inches above the bottom of each barrel. A 12 inch riser was situated as near to the center of each barrel as possible, using a threaded T. Atop each riser was placed a mushroom bubbler.

Here are some pictures of our Place-and-Go Lazy Person's Instant Vegetable Garden with nine of the barrels all cut and laid out with the irrigation lines through them.

Next, 10 of the barrels were filled with the garden soil at left. (Only 10 at this time, because a) the vegetables purchased would only utilize 10 barrels, and b) calculations on the amount of soil needed were faulty.)

Fortunately, I was able to construct rudimentary tomato cages and snow pea trellises out of bamboo growing at the other end of the yard. Also planted are potatoes, onions, strawberries, califlower, lettuce, artichokes, and broccoli. It probably bears mentioning at this point, that the only things I have ever grown before to any success would be tomatoes and snow peas. We bought a little seed starting kit, and started seeds for lima beans, cantaloupe, watermelon, some other kind of lettuce, and carrots, for planting in the remaining barrels, after they germinate. As you can tell, this is a fairly ambitious garden project for a beginner. But I figure that if half the crop is successful, we should have plenty of veggies.

After the plants had all been installed, we went to hook up the water to the timer and begin irrigating our garden adventure. Now, earlier, I had encountered a little trouble with a leaky hose bib; I thought that this had taken some of the water pressure away from the bubblers, causing them only to trickle and run down the risers. After the hose bib was replaced, I found that there was no increase in water pressure. Even with the unused bubblers closed, the remaining bubblers did not make mushroom shapes, but just ran down the center of the riser. This would have been okay, except that all the water was just running right out of the barrels, since it was not spreading out through the soil at all.

Needless to say, this was very annoying! The first solution tried was to change the bubbler heads. Originally, we had used the green turn-adjustable type (right), then changed to the black screw-adjust type (left).

Unfortunately, this fix didn't work either. There was no adjusting the water pressure at the source of the sprinkler heads! So, the next idea was to limit the amount of water pressure necessary, by changing the piping. Instead of one circuit, there would now be three. Here is the revised irrigation array.

Click here for an enlargement of the diagram.

Farmer P changing the piping. He is not a happy camper.