Our New Garden Center

I used to really enjoy gardening. I love the smell & feel of the earth, watching things grow, even pulling weeds I found enjoyable. It was such fun to be outside and enjoy nature. But for a couple of years now, I was rendered physically unable from neck surgery to do what, after motorcycling, I treasured the most.

Plus, with the economy quickly tanking, I thought it would be a good idea to get back into growing edible foods and tasty animals. Being half Scottish, I detest spending money anyway and certainly do not trust our failure government to "take care of us". Growing our own food is going to be part of my own small way of practicing Atlas Shrugged: no taxes! I have many, many other ideas about how to legally escape the tax man that I could share later. Let me know if y’all have any ideas on how to avoid buying things that are taxed. It’s time to starve the Monster by trading and buying used products. One idea I have is to only purchase older vehicles from individuals and renovate them to make them look new. I didn't realize how easy it was to do this until our recent Project Bike, but more on that later.

Anyway, I told my husband that I would like to try container gardening. But I didn't have the shelf areas in the sun to hold the containers at waist level. We tossed ideas back and to until we came up with this sketch on paper:


Kinda hard to picture the finished project, isn’t it?

I thought, it would be cheap and easy. Thankfully, it was! The project is made almost entirely from 1 1/2 inch PVC. Another way we saved money, is by using old decking material that we still had sitting in our woodpile.


First prepare the flat,
clean area for gluing the PVC together.
You'll be so glad you've done this first!


Using a power saw saved a lot of time with
cutting the pieces to their proper lengths.


Placing the pieced areas together was fairly quick.


It was finally taking shape.
The only thing left to add was the used decking
for holding the containers and the pots themselves.
Note To Self: Containers with soil are VERY heavy.
Add water and that can be a problem
if not done properly.
Be sure to place lots of supports underneath.


Ta Da! Plants are fertilized and in their containers.
This Garden Center was suppose to be moveable,
at it is, BUT because of the weight of the
plants the only way to
move it without damage is to unload it first.

There is a complete list of photos here I snapped as we build the Garden Center.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting hungry. Now I need to learn how to raise chickens, turkeys and goats.