danmdevries wrote:Just spent $1k on new garden planters for the wife. Basically livestock troughs but with open bottoms. 18" tall 24" deep and 8ft wide. Bought 4 of em to go around the deck where I'd built a wooden raised garden with landscape timbers and they rotted away pretty quickly. Hopefully these last longer. My initial plan was to set 4x4 posts in the ground and then put corrugated sheet steel between the posts to make the planters but the steel alone was $1500 and probably $500 for the posts and stuff.
I've seen people around here use the same thing. There's a community garden at one of the churches a few block away that did it this season in replacement of their older wooden raised beds.
Kids that attend the summer camp maintain the gardens and folks can come and pick the veggies and herbs if they want. They also a farmer's market during and at the end of the growing season for some extra cash and is a nice summer project for the kids. It's a cool thing they do and the kids do most of the work. Community garden, clean up trash at the town parks, groom some of the walking/bike paths that run around one of the local little lakes... stuff like that.
When I did raised beds at my previous house I used pressure treated 4x4 posts at the corners and at the mid span then used oak lumber from pallets between the posts. There are two businesses in town that make pallets and one and the next town over so there's usually a supply discarded pallets and trimmings. I'd stain the outside of the raised beds for aesthetics but other than that the oak was untreated and would rot out after a handful of year and needed to be replaced. No biggie, I had access to free discarded pallets and scrap wood so it didn't cost me anything other than sweat labor. The scrap oak made for nice fire pit burning too.
Now, as an apartment dweller, I'm using woven grow bags and set them on coasters to move them around as needed. They've been working out pretty well but require daily watering as the bags (being above ground and breathable) don't hold water as well compared to if the plants were grown in solid ground. I'm only doing tomatoes, peppers, beans, and cukes this year.