vegetable containers: weekend project.

i’ve been wanting to plant a little vegetable garden here at the new house, but haven’t been able to find just the right spot. until i decided on these galvanized troughs i found on amazon. i’d been looking for these for a while after seeing something similar in stable cafe’s herb garden in san francisco, but i guess it hadn’t occurred to me that amazon would have such an item. they come in a variety of sizes, but i chose two at 4.5′ x 2′ (the 98 gallon size at just $150). i wanted to plant the garden close to the kitchen for easy access and since it’s all paved or stones, the galvanized troughs were the perfect solution because they could be placed on top of the stone pavers. they’d be a great solution for a lot of small spaces. oh, but one annoyance warning: they come with these big ugly stickers on them, so i used goo-gone and some boiling hot water and scraped them off with a knife. why stickers, why!?

these tanks are meant to be used on farms as animal feeding or water troughs but lots of people use them for garden and vegetable beds and i love the way they look. we drilled holes in the bottom and added gravel for good drainage and then loaded them with some really good organic soil. we added a ton of water and mixed up the soil to get lots of aeration in there. and then we hit the local nursery — my favorite here in L.A. is sunset nursery because they have a great variety of good quality, organic plants, and they are super helpful. i got lettuces, kale, argula, carrots, tomatoes, zuchhini, cucumbers and a bunch of herbs. then i labeled everything with these copper plant stakes. so cute, right?

i can’t tell you how happy it makes me and how satisfying it feels to grow something that i can actually eat. wish me luck! and if you’re looking for a vegetable bed idea, try this out!