Water trough raised beds

One of my pasture water tanks sprung a leak.

See the pin holes in the rust?

Not too long ago my neighbor had one blow the side seam. Which means I now have a matched pair and I can expand my garden! Yes, I could go out and buy galvanized water troughs whenever I want to expand, but it just seems wrong when I know among my network of friends there will be at least one or two of us that have to replace a damaged trough every year. In that case, I'd rather buy a new one and replace an old one rather than see the old one get hauled off to the dump.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 8x4 raised beds. But as I expand my garden I'm getting into the part of the back yard where the septic and utility lines run. My 8x4 beds are permanent structures - if something needs to be done underneath them I lose the entire bed (or two or three) to a backhoe. If I have these tanks in the same spot, a front end loader can easily scoop them up and move them out of the way if work needs to be done.

Here's how I make them:

1. Drill drain holes. Probably not necessary for some people, but if we get one of these torrential rain storms with 5+ inches of rain in 24 hours, it needs to go somewhere.

I prefer working on the rubber mat flooring in the barn aisle. That way I can easily sweep up the metal filings rather than accidentally get them embedded in the bottoms of my garden clogs or flip flops later.

Cordless drill, metal-friendly bit somewhere in the 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch size, and the all important safety goggles are what you need to start. The OCD-tendencies in me like having nice neat rows with offset holes, but you can do whatever makes your heart happy.

1a. Plug the big holes. My friend uses permanently attached hoses and automatic floats to fill her tanks, which means the drain plug at the bottom is usually missing by the time I get the tank. Similar issue with the tanks that have split their seams. I'll patch it with a piece of window screen and caulk. I'm just trying to prevent dirt from falling out/through. Nothing special, just a bunch of caulk to adhere the screen to the side of the tank - I happened to have some window and door caulk laying around. Let this dry well before filling the trough with dirt. 

2. Place the troughs. I like a 3-foot spacing so I can easily get my wheel barrow in between them. I've also filled in the low spots on the ground with topsoil so the finished troughs are relatively level. I didn't do this with the first one I installed, and now if I water too fast it tends to run to one end. Oops.

And yes, I like to put landscape fabric down first. Helps keep the weeds down, and it's easier to do it now than to cut it in around the planters later.

3. Cover the drill holes with mesh. Yeah, it's optional, but I have nightmares about the fine particles settling through. And really, I'm recycling. I use the old top screens from my rain barrels - the one that have gotten stretched and snagged a little thanks to the cats. Trim them up a little and they are the right size for these 2x4 water troughs. I was going to replace those screens this fall anyway.

4. Fill. As with my other raised beds, my preferred mix is three bags (about 1-cubic foot each) of commercial topsoil and one 2-cubic foot bag of commercial garden soil. I'll mix up the first batch in the wheel barrow before shoveling it in. After that I'll usually start layering garden soil and top soil in the trough and mix it well with a shovel or garden spade before adding the next layers. It gets a little messy as it gets full, but I'm not as likely to spill as when I'm mixing in the wheel barrow and then transferring it scoop by scoop.

Topsoil on top, garden soil on the bottom, before I start mixing it in the wheel barrow.

I like this blend because the garden soil adds some good organic matter. The topsoil isn't always consistent - sometimes it has bits of mulch, sometimes it doesn't. I want the porosity of the garden soil but need the soil structure of the real stuff.

I like to fill the entire trough with soil. I know some people advocate putting gravel or empty plastic water bottles in the bottom but I have a problem with that. Any time you go to a bigger aggregate (gravel, water bottles) it changes the gravity flow of water through the column - or so I was taught way back in my soil science classes in college. The other reason I don't like to do that is because plants need a lot of root space. They say on trees whatever mass you see above ground there is a similar mass below ground. Given how large my pepper plants can get, that means there could be tiny roots going almost the full depth of the planter. I want to give them as much space as possible.

To fill these 2x4x2 troughs I used three 2-cubic foot bags of garden soil and 7-8 bags of topsoil. I do the topsoil/garden soil mixture all the way through and then top it off with another bag or two of topsoil to get it flush with the top of the trough. It will settle a little the first few weeks. If I have any compost available I'll mix that in to, mostly on the top layer.

5. Plant. Enough said.

Happy water trough gardening!

Sweet Potato Harvest, 2015!

A few weeks back it was time to dig the sweet potatoes! This year I tried something different - I put my nine plants in a big 8x4 raised bed. When the vines spilled over the bed I looped them back around so the runners could set more roots.

Last year I was having problems with the vines overflowing the water trough planter and setting roots and tubers in the walking path mulch. When I ran out of raised bed space this time I started giving the vines haircuts before they could set tubers.

Pre-harvest

I started by whacking off all of the vines, leaving a few inches remaining so I knew where to start digging. After that it was a systematic digging, sifting, redigging process. Some of the vines set tubers against the walls of the bed, which meant there were a few flat-sided tubers. The tubers went deep in some areas so I had to go back through and re-dig what I though I already got. But in the end this is what I came up with.

Left to right - big sweet potatoes, fingerling size sweet potatoes, surprise Yukon Golds

I also unearthed a few residual Irish potatoes (Yukon Golds) that were volunteers left behind from the spring crop.

Good roasting size 'taters in there!

Now they need to sit in the shed out of the sun and rain for a few weeks. The starches will start to convert to sugars and the skins will toughen up.

In hindsight, I liked the 8x4 raised bed better than the water trough, but next year I need to do a better job of watering and fertilizing. What I should have done was lay down a bunch of soaker hoses before the vines took off. Next time...