I don’t have any photos this week, because it was sad. I don’t know if it was from my peat pellets (they grew a hairy white mold) or contaminated soil I brought in from the garden, but my plants had a green mold growing on them, and there were gnats. I tossed it all, and started fresh. I had sort of jumped the gun originally, so I had lots of time to do this. Another problem–I had not been diligent enough in labeling, and I was unsure which peppers were which! Silly me!

Cost:

• $20 pots ($1 each)
• $12 potting soil
• $2 six packs

I did start building my new garden boxes. I found out my old boxes will not “mix and match” with my new vinyl materials, so basically I’m rebuilding them. They are 4′x4′x1′ (instead of 6″ high). I’ll post photos when I get them done.

Cost:

• $27 router (on super sale! at Harbor Freight Tools)
• ??? bit (need to pay my sister back for this)
• $223 posts and rails (4-5′ posts, 11-16′ rails, $14 each)
• $0 borrowed a miter saw
• $0 jig for routing holes in posts (thanks to my talented brother in law!)

Altogether, it will cost about the same to build twice as many boxes, twice as high as it did to buy the original 3 boxes from the squarefootgardening.com website. And I’ll sell my 3 boxes to a friend, and recoup a about a third of my cost.

Filed under: 2008