Container gardening (also)

Following up on Big Dog's post, I too am container gardening most my veggies this year. Although they are probably technically more like raised beds since they have no bottom.  After several discussions with Big Dog and trolling a common online forum, I am also going with 5:1:1 mix. Due to all the rain, I also pre-mixed mine in the garage. I went with 150 gallons of pine bark fines which yields ~210 gallons of total mix.  I know, I know...copycat!  Many of my pics look just like Big Dog's so just showing my completed mix awaiting containers. And then my first prototype of what will be 4 similar containers.


I toyed with using watering troughs as containers because they're easy, done, and fairly cheap. But my neighbor showed up with two for his yard and not only did I not want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he influenced my container selection, I also just didn't like the way they looked. So, I turned back to some of my wood container designs that I drew up over the winter. I ended up with the one below. It turns out to be quite inexpensive (less than the same size water trough- this was about $60 to build out of red cedar) and after some necessary tweaks to my first prototype below, my cut-list is solid and the remaining three boxes will go together in less than an hour each.  They are 4'x2'x2' which ends up being almost exactly 100 gallons of soil. I'll use my 5:1:1 for the two containers carrying bigger plants that need deep/sprawling roots. The other two will be for herbs, lettuce, and smaller, shallow root plants in a soil/compost mix.