The house work continues trying to get some of the things we had in Chandler here in Meridian, and that has meant that my wife asked me about garden boxes. We had one small area in the backyard that was fairly flat that I thought I could get some garden boxes into. So, I did some measuring, found the water line in that area, and then went about trying to get garden boxes. I had seen that a lot of people in the area had used the water basin without a bottom as garden boxes. So, I thought that was a nice idea. Months ago I saw a bundle of 3 of those at Lowes and thought that may be an easy way of doing things, but when it came time to buy them I found out they were $170 A PIECE, not as a bundle of 3. So, that was a hard no. I started looking at building them again with redwood like I had in Chandler, but my wonderful wife found some metal ones online that you build at home for a reasonable price. So, I ordered those off amazon. They came, I built them, and got that part done a few weeks ago.
Then it was time to fill the boxes. These boxes are 4ft x 8ft x 2ft so they aren’t small. At first I thought I would get bags of material at Lowes or Home Depot. I did research and found that I should start with around 6″ of rock for good drainage. I did the math and found I needed just over a cubic yard of rock. At Lowes and Home Depot that meant about $250 of rock per box. I was a bit shocked so I called the place I bought my fruit trees at and they had a cubic yard of rock for … $35. Yep, over $215 cheaper than Lowes. But I had to get it to my place, and I don’t have easy access to a trailer. Oh, and a cubic yard of rock weighs about a ton (roughly 2000lbs or 1000kg). So, hat to do. I looked into renting a trailer, which I could do for $30 a day that would handle the load, but I had to also buy a ball and receiver for my car that was rated for that amount of weight. That added to the cost. I called the nursery back and found that they could deliver it for $50. SOLD! They delivered it the following week. Then I needed a wheel barrow, and I was able to borrow one from someone in my Wednesday night Bible study group (thanks Trevor). So I hauled a ton of rock from my driveway to the opposite side of my backyard and filled in the rock.
Next was the soil. I did the math and I figured I needed about 3.6 cubic yards of soil (I would have to buy 4 cubic yards). I called the nursery I got the rock from but their delivery vehicle can only move a ton of material in each delivery. So I would have to pay for 3 delivery trips. As a result I had to find another place to get the soil (and they agreed that it made the most sense to do that). I found another nursery and they were able to do the soil in one trip and they brought it over and dumped it on my driveway, where the rock was the previous week. It sure didn’t look like enough when it was sitting there on my driveway.
Then I loved soil over the course of a few days when I was able to. It probably took me a little over 4 hours to move it all, and I had some left over afterwards (I was surprised). I will use that in case the soil settles before planting occurs. And here is what the filled boxes look like now:
I only got 2 blisters on my hands over the course of moving all that soil. And I was surprised that I wasn’t sore in the arms at all, just a little bit in my lower back. That was nice overall, and the blisters were gone by the next day.
I have to get the watering figured out still. I have access to waterline. I just have to run line from it up to the boxes, and make sure I secure everything down well. I will also have to go and buy some things as well.
Overall, this is what $500 (so far) looks like for getting a garden setup. Gardening doesn’t really pay for itself, but my ladies like it, and that is all that really matters. This is just about it now for the transformation of the yard for us. The only thing left is for me to finish taking out some “trees” from along the side of my house in the front that my family, and my neighbors, don’t care for, and then we are talking about putting in grapes in their place. That is a slow process since I can only get a fraction of one “tree” into the garbage can each week, but I will get it done.