DIY Rain Barrel

DIY Rain Barrel

 Make a DIY rain-collection barrel. With it you can get and store some free water to help your flowers, grass and a garden thrive. Such barrel is easy to make and won’t cost much. The idea is to place a container below a downspout and connect a hose to it. A heavy-duty industrial trash bin would be a great container to make the barrel. For instructions check out this awesome article from Workbench magazine.

The Benefits of Vertical Gardening

What Is Vertical Gardening?

Simply put, vertical gardening is the practice of growing certain vegetable plants up a support to keep them from spreading on the ground. Most vining plants, such as cucumbers, can be grown vertically using a trellis. Growing these plants vertically saves space, and generally promotes more vigorous growth.

The Benefits of Vertical Gardening

As mentioned above, growing plants vertically saves space in the vegetable garden. You can grow more plants in a smaller area by using vertical gardening practices. A plant that would normally take up 4 square feet spread across the vegetable garden, will only take up 2 square feet if vertical gardening is used.

Vertical gardening can also greatly improve your crop production. Keeping vegetable plants off the soil will help prevent soil-borne diseases, and may limit the chances of rotten fruit. If vegetables are allowed to lay on the soil, they can begin rotting on the bottom side due to excessive moisture.

Growing some vining plants up a support also reduces the risk of powdery mildew, and other mildews, by improving the air circulation around the plants. This will also improve access to blooms for bees and other pollinators. Vertical gardening can greatly improve the overall appearance of your garden, because spreading plants will not look so unwieldy.

Tips to use recycled plastic jugs in your garden

Here are are few tips to use recycled plastic jugs in your garden! 

ENJOY!

1. Use gallon bottles/jugs and cultivate what you want.. ideal for anyone who lives in an apartment or small area.

2. Cut the bottom off your gallon milk jugs (and save the bottoms ... you'll see why!) and use them as cloches in the garden! Place them over young tomato, pepper, and other plants, to protect them from frost on chilly spring nights.

3. Slice off the bottom inch or two of your milk jugs, and use them as a tray for starting seeds. Use the top sections as cloches, and you've gotten two great uses out of every milk jug! Poke a few holes in the bottom for drainage, add potting soil or seed starting mix, and plant seeds.

4. Don't spend a bushel of cash on upside-down vegetable planters. You can make them from milk jugs.

5. Slice milk jugs at an angle and you have an instant scoop, complete with handle. Just make sure you leave the lid on! This works perfectly for grass seed, fertilizer, potting soil, and even bird seed! For smaller jobs, use half-gallon jugs.

6. For liquid fertilizer, plant food, herbicides, or other chemicals that need mixing with water, use a milk jug! Measure and add the first ingredient to an empty milk jug, set it on a level surface, and use a permanent marker to make a line at the top of the liquid. Write the ingredient name in the space it occupies in the jug. Add other ingredients as needed, one at a time, marking and labeling after each addition. Next time you make the mix, you won't have to measure. Just use the markings on the milk jug! To avoid mixing chemicals that shouldn't be mixed, reserve one milk jug for your plant food, another for herbicides, and so on, and label them clearly.

7. Punch a series of small holes in the top of a gallon or half-gallon milk jug, fill with water, and use in place of a watering can! The half-gallon size works great for children or anyone who can't manage a heavy full gallon. The water comes out slowly, so kids are less likely to drown plants. If you have to transport water to a garden or flower bed, use a solid lid to haul the gallons of water, and replace it with a hole-punched lid once you get there!

8. Gallon milk jugs are big enough to plant tomatoes. Can hang on deck or wall.

9. Poke tiny holes in the bottom of the jug and place next to new plants.

Ozarks Gardening Made Easy with Raised Beds! (How-To)

Materials for a raised garden bed

• One 6-foot-long 4-by-4 ($15) (Cedar or Redwood is best for rot resistance & Aesthetics)
• Six 8-foot-long 2-by-6s ($75) (Cedar or Redwood is best for rot resistance & Aesthetics)
• 32 3½-inch #14 wood screws and 16 ½-inch #8 wood screws ($29)
• One 4- by 10-foot roll of ¼-inch-mesh hardware cloth ($15)
• 32 cubic feet (1 1/5 cu. yd.) planting mix ($25 in bulk or $100 in bags)

 Everyone in the Ozarks knows that when you're out to garden you best get ready to do a lot of "rock" gardening, because our earth is so rough & tumble full of clay, rock and sand that it's hard to get good crops out of it unless you take years or many dollars worth of top soil, manure and compost to get it worth planting in. (Not counting tomatoes which seem to love our soil type & as does our native flora).

The above materials should be enough to create one raised bed  (see our previous blog post on how to make an insulated raised garden bed.)



With a table or power saw, cut the 4-by-4 into four 16-inch-tall corner posts. Cut two of the 2-by-6s in half. Cut the 1-inch PVC pipe into four 12-inch-long pieces and the ½-inch PVC pipes into 6-foot-long pieces. Assemble pieces on a hard, flat surface by nailing/drilling the 2-by-6's and their halves to the four corner posts you cut to make a approx. 8 ft long box. After marking off an area and placing the box where you want it to be in your garden, place the cloth (or chicken wire) on the ground to keep out moles, then fill the bed with a good healthy mix of soil (home mixes that are comprised of compost such as manure, leaves, veggie/fruit leavings are excellent- Goat, Rabbit, Horse & Donkey manure are great for this.) to where it's just about 1-1.5" from the top of the boards. You should be able to get about 6 rows of leaf lettuce out of each box, but the needs of each crop you intend to plant will vary in spacing requirements for a good healthy harvest. (Allot space for poles or supports for beans, tomatoes, etc).

Click Here For a Visual Step-By-Step on how to assemble a raised bed.

Some design ideas we found online: (good to doodle these out during Winter to help get organized for Spring!)

Remember, if you want a custom and different design your materials will change compared to what we've shown above, so allot for the changes for your own design.